A Romantic Rationalist

Rediscovering the Joy of Science Writing

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Mon, 17 Feb 2020 17:21:00 -0800

Over the last 12 years or so my writing has changed, and not necessarily for the better. As I recuperated following seven weeks of radiation treatments for tonsil cancer, I happened to come across a printout of an assigned essay I wrote as an undergrad in 2008. At the risk of sounding immodest, I was surprised by how much clearer and cleaner my earlier prose was than much of my later writing.

So what the heck happened? As I reread some of my other undergrad writing, what struck me was my focus on sharing the joy, pleasure, and satisfaction of learning about the world around us. Around 2010, the focus and tenor of my writing morphed into an outlet for my frustration and annoyance at—to be blunt—the stupidity of large numbers of my fellow human beings. As a result, my writing became denser and more detailed, increasing the likelihood og my flying off on a tangent—my favorite trig function—but also took much of the joy and pleasure out of the writing process.

Though raised in a very conservative, evangelical Christian home, I was a voracious reader whose curiosity knew no bounds. From my exposure to Christian belief, I developed an interest in ancient history and lost civilizations. Entering elementary school as the Apollo program was at its zenith I also became fascinated with—as I then called it—“outer space.” Over the course of my own life—for the most part—what caused me to adopt a more fact and evidence-based world-view were passionate, but matter-of-fact descriptions of what we know—and how we know it—of the history and nature of the universe on both the largest and smallest scales in the way Carl Sagan’s Cosmos—both the ground-breaking television series and the book—did.

Two good examples of this matter-of-fact approach is how, as a young person in church, I became familiar with the stories of the Old Testament (OT), such as the patriarch Abram (later re-christened Abraham by Yahweh) and of Moses and the Exodus. According to Genesis 11 (and elsewhere in the OT), the mysterious-sounding “Ur of the Chaldees” was the original home of Abraham. I was fascinated to later learn that Ur was a very ancient Sumerian city-state indeed, with the first signs of settlement dating back to the 4000’s BCE (i.e. the 5^th millennium BCE) , long before Abraham is believed to have lived.¹ One of the most famous artifacts found at Ur, dating from around 2600 BCE, is the Standard of Ur, depicting different aspects of ancient Sumerian life. Curiously, the Chaldeans were a much later ethic mix that founded the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 612 BCE, long after the time of Abraham. “Ur of the Chaldees” probably found its way into the Old Testament because the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, who had Chaldean ancestors, rebuilt some of the important religious sites at Ur, and was well-known as the arch-villain who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 587 BCE and sent all but the poorest of Judah’s population in to exile in Babylon.

Unlike Nebuchadnezzar II, there is no unequivocal evidence, written or otherwise, to the existence for Moses or the Exodus outside the Bible. The pharaoh of the Exodus could have erased all written/carved evidence of Moses in Egypt, which the faithful believe explains away the lack of such evidence. However, when it comes to the 40 years of wandering by the Israelites in the desert, it bears noting that humans, even in the ancient world, are notorious for generating a lot of rubbish in the form of bones, broken pottery, etc.—something for which archaeologists are very grateful. Yet despite over a century of archaeologists—those with and without a religious agenda—combing throughout the Sinai peninsula, no material evidence for any such trail of garbage has been found for a mass migration on the supposed scale of the Exodus at the time it is presumed to have happened.

In my writing over the last 10 years, I’d run around like a lone outfielder in a home run derby batting practice, making my prose dense, turgid, and obtuse as I flew off on an almost exponentially expanding number of tangents trying to tackle every conceivable objection and protest of the most benighted, uninformed reader. The more matter-of-fact approach I described above is to simply point out how it only takes the failure of a few links in story to throw the whole account into quite reasonable, justified doubt. If one persists in protesting past this point then I justly dismiss them as a fool and move on.

In light of this shift in the focus of my non-fiction essays, I will be starting a new blog in the next few months, perhaps on WordPress. Another reason I’m changing my blogging home is that the name of my Blogger blog, Romantic Rationalist, has been hijacked by a biography of C.S. Lewis of the same title—who I despise and have no interest in reading. I will provide a link to my new home in a final post.

Works Cited

1. ‘Ur’ Anc. East Encycl. Stud. Ed by. Ronald Wallenfels & Jack M. Sasson. (2000).

Baloney Check—"Nazis are the same as Socialists"–Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 5 Dec 2019 21:07:00 -0800

I’ve written elsewhere of one annoying downside to being a military veteran is when people, knowing nothing else about me other than I’m a veteran—and the obvious demographic data points like probable age, ethnicity, birth sex/gender, etc.—then go on to make totally unwarranted assumptions about my political, religious, or ideological leanings.

This genesis of this particular essay was in a conversation with a client at my desk several years ago. Out the blue, my interlocutor told me in utter earnestness how much he “hates it when liberals call conservatives [presumably upstanding, white, male, veterans like himself] Nazis, because everyone knows Nazis were the real socialists.” Overall find my job rewarding and worthwhile, but I’ve also had a great deal of practice keeping a straight face when confronted by such daft assertions. To see how pervasive this particular misconception is, one merely need look at this web page.

Debunking baloney takes far longer than spewing it, and this isn’t my first attempt to address this claim and those like it. I kept going off into the weeds of academic references and sources, as though my response was aimed at a well-informed, if not scholarly, audience. Finally, I struck upon the most concise formula I could come up with, which is well-suited for people who think in compartmentalized sound bytes. Where appropriate, I will provide citations for those who, like me, value intellectual honesty.

To start with though, I need to lay some groundwork by defining my terms as I want my words to mean what I intend them to mean in their historical context, not what modern Americans unthinkingly assume they mean.ⁱ It’s important to keep in mind that Hitler’s ideology and vocabulary were products of the Europe of the first four decades of the 1900s—not in the United States during of the Cold War and the more recent “culture wars.” Not taking this fact into account is to bear false witness, and “God’ll get you for that.” With that, here we go…

Liberalism (sometimes prefixed with the adjective classical) was an outgrowth of the Enlightenment and is dedicated to the preservation of civil liberties (freedom of speech, press, worship/conscience, and assembly, etc.), protection of the right to private property, and freedom of economic activity. Examples: the representative,constitutional monarchy of Great Britain (since 1689) and the United States since its founding. During the 18th and 19th centuries, liberalism’s hallmark was its opposition to monarchical absolutism such as in pre-revolution France, the Kaisers of the Holy Roman Empire and later, Germany, and the Tsars of Russia.
Socialism was a product of the explosive growth of the predominantly urban, industrial working classes and the rise of organized labor movements throughout 19th century in Europe and the United States. The first attempt at a Marxist-style workers revolution was the second Paris Commune, which lasted for just over two months in the spring of 1871.ⁱⁱ
A key feature of socialism going back to Marx and Engels was its strident anti-nationalism. According to Marx and Engels, the proper basis for solidarity among the non-propertied working classes of all nations was not their language, ethnicity, or county of birth, but their class. The natural allies of the industrial working class in Great Britain were not other British citizens, but members of the industrial working-classes in Belgium, or Germany’s Ruhr Valley. Traditional liberals among the propertied business and professional classes saw working-class demands for extensions of democratic rights to non-property owners as a larger threat to the security of their own new-found status than the absolute monarchies still in power in some parts of Europe. During the First World War, Socialists in the strict Marxist mold in general did not support their own country’s taking part on either side. This is why both France and Germany had trouble with socialists throughout the war.^{1
para 8.14-15}
- Democratic Socialism arose during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when many European socialists wanted to maintain and preserve liberalism’s principles of equality before the law and representative democracy, but saw the appalling gaps still remaining between the haves and have-nots even in the liberal democracies and believed there was still room for improvement. Democratic socialists (or social democrats) believed the way to a more equitable society was to nationalize—to at least some extent—the means of wealth creation through the give-and-take of the democratic process.
- Communism was born in the 1917 Russian Revolution spearheaded by Lenin and others who believed only by establishing a rigid, single-party, authoritarian state through violent revolution and the forced collectivization of all sectors of the economy—including subsistence agriculture—would the desired worker’s paradise be realized. Social democrats in western Europe’s liberal democracies were appalled by reports of atrocities committed in the name of Russian Bolshevism (meaning roughly “revolutionary socialism” in Russian) and Mao’s Red China, which slowly leaked out following World War II and sought to distance themselves the Russian and Chinese varieties of socialism (i.e. communism), and began to describe themselves as social democrats.^2--p.13–20

Where what would eventually become the Nazi Party in Germany fitted into this political, social, and economic landscape will be covered later.

The last item needing addressed at this point is the common notion that everyone is entitled to their opinion. In a simplistic, kindergarten sort of way, we are “entitled to our opinions” on which flavor of ice cream or ethnic cuisine tastes best. However, grownups who maintain opinions on matters weightier than trivial matters of taste—be it the efficacy and safety of vaccines, the history of the First and Second World Wars, or auto mechanics—and blithely expose their ignorance of basic facts and concepts relevant to the opinions they hold, render such opinions worthless. Moreover, once made aware of the fatal gaps in their knowledge, if they persist in arguing for their “opinion,” they are justly dismissed as fools.

Until next time, I’ll leave the reader to ponder the following: if the “Nazism = Socialism” (N = S) assertion has any historical validity, how can it be squared with the dumbfounded reaction of the western democracies to the news of the non-aggression pact (a.k.a. the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact) between Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union? When announced in August 1939, leaders in England, France, and the United States were flabbergasted as Hitler was a virulent anti-communist.

So have fun chewing on that until next time.

Works Cited

1. Weber, T. Becoming Hitler: the making of a Nazi. (Oxford University Press: Oxford, United Kingdom, 2017).

2. Stackelberg, R. Hitler’s Germany: Origins, interpretations, legacies. (Routledge: London ; New York, 1999).

Endnotes:

i “Inconceivable!”—and if you don’t know which awesome movie that quote references, then there is no hope for you.

ii This was mere months after the two dozen or so principalities of France’s great enemy, Germany, were unified under the first Kaiser of all Germany, Otto von Bismarck, forming the “Second Reich.” I leave it as an exercise for the reader to demonstrate the lack of a connection between these two events.

The Big “C” - Chapter 4

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 4 Dec 2019 19:39:00 -0800

November 20 — December 4, 2019

Where my cancer is will taken into account in the treatment of my cancer, as it will affect the way the radiation therapy is delivered. For those with brain tumors, cognitive impairment, sometimes very severe, can be a lasting side-effect. Most, quite reasonably, would be happy to shave a few points off their IQ if doing so meant not dying from cancer.

But hey, guess what? To a significant extent, this is very much all about me! To those who’ve read some of my other blog posts, first I must apologize for my writing—but the souls who have risked loosing their latest meal will already know parts of my tale. For those who do not, here’s the short version: my childhood medical records document my diagnosis as “hyperactive” in 1970, and after some trial and error I was put on Ritalin, but was off it by the end of elementary school. Then, 12 years ago, at the age of 42, I was diagnosed with adult ADHD. I was not surprised, but at the time I was an electrical engineering major, and was afraid I’d be told I wasn’t university material. Considering the majority of feedback I’d received throughout my life, I figured my IQ was, at most, on the high end of the “average” range, i.e. not much higher than 115. No, the real shock was learning that for most of my lifeⁱ, I was walking around with a gifted-level IQ of 136.

To balance out the sense of lost opportunities when younger, this new bit of self-knowledge also gave me a vastly expanded sense of future potentialities. I hope some would understand why I might be loath to sacrifice my long-unrecognized gifts so soon after learning I even had them. Mindful of how my concerns might be perceived, I shared shared them with my cancer care team, who reassured me that cognitive side-effects are not a serious concern.

While I do not have a brain tumor, my carcinoma is uncomfortably close to my brain, so the x-rays used to treat it will still need to aimed very precisely. To ensure such precision, my head/face will need to be immobilized so that every radiotherapy session/treatment targets the same area. The description of how this would be done brought to mind what actors go through when fitted for prosthetic makeup (Klingon cosplay anyone?). This YouTube video depicts someone being fitted for a radiation therapy mask.

The excision of one of my lymph nodes went off without a hitch. Within 48 hours, my nurse navigator called to tell me that the lymph node biopsied as benign. That was really good news. When the PET scan was done in late October, my carcinoma measured 3.2 cm. The chemo oncologist felt it would be wise to get a quick CT scan of the carcinoma to make sure is hasn’t grown, as 4 cm is the threshold for considering chemotherapy in conjunction with radiation. The CT scan results showed there was no perceptible change in the size of the carcinoma, so no chemo for me!

My radiotherapy will consist of 35 sessions, Monday through Friday (excluding holidays) and the first treatment will be on December 5^th, and assuming I don’t miss any scheduled treatments, I’ll be done on January 24.

Stay tuned!

Endnotes

The details are complicated, but overall, IQ is relatively stable over an individual’s lifetime.

The Big “C”-Chapter 3

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Mon, 2 Dec 2019 17:45:00 -0800

October 29—November 19, 2019

While chemotherapy is not Plan A, on 29 October I met with my chemo oncologist for the first time. He was able to pull up my 25 October PET scan. “PET” is short for positron emission tomography. The process leverages the “fuel” needs of metabolically active sites in the body. Part of the MO of cancersⁱ is to create new blood vessels to supply their ravenous appetites, so when radioactively-tagged “fuel”—in my case, glucose—is intravenously administered, it quickly concentrates in the most metabolically sites in the body, such as the heart, brain...and my cancer.

Of course, the carcinoma on my left tonsil was glaringly obvious, glowing a bright yellow-white. My heart and brain were also quite active, as was the tissue of my gums as they were healing following the trauma of having most of my teeth pulled. The doctor pointed out the nearby lymph nodes that may or may not be showing activity related to my cancer—which I noticed were about the same color intensity as my gums. Our brains must have been running on parallel tracks, which the doctor was the first to verbalize, as he said the activity may be due to the normal, expected immune response to my recent dental trauma. Smiling, I responded with “I was about to say the same thing.”

Obviously, we can’t merely assume it is one or the other, we need to do the science. The plan is for a quick, inpatient surgery to exact at least one of the iffy lymph nodes, then slice, dice, and biopsy each section separately. Later that week, I’ll meet with the radiation oncologist to review the result of the biopsies, taking them into account when planning my radiotherapy sessions.

The lymph node excision surgery is scheduled for November 19^th, and within a few days, we will know if it has spread to the nearest lymph node, or whether the metabolic activity observed in the PET scan was likely just part of an ordinary immune response.

Endnotes:

i Technically, tumors can be benign or malignant, that is, cancerous or noncancerous.

The Big “C”-Chapter 2

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 19:38:00 -0800

October 16-October 28, 2019

Once I knew the type of cancer I have, I immediately googled “squamous cell carcinoma” (SCCs). The way I approach online research of serious, academic subjects is to review the initial search results to look for possible keywords. Wikipedia is a good place to find further keywords and search terms. From there I turn to the academic research databases EBSCO and Proquest (normally available to anyone with online access to their local public library card).

Many of the webpages I initially reviewed referred to SCC as a type of skin cancer. On a hunch, when I added “oral” to my search terms, I noticed “HPV” was frequently mentioned as well. This struck me as possibly significant; in 1987 I was treated for genital warts, so I may have bits of HPVⁱ DNA in my blood and/or plasma, just as having chickenpox as a kid means I have the virus causing shingles quietly sequestered somewhere in my body—at least for now.

What I found in the online Merck Manual (professional version) made me sit up and take notice, especially the following: “HPV type 16 causes 60% of oropharyngeal cancers [i.e. the main oral cavity, including the tonsils-MN] and patients have become younger (median age 57 yr, and bimodal peaks at 30 yr and 55 yr) as HPV infection has emerged as an etiology. The number of sexual partners and frequency of oral sex are important risk factors. The risk of developing oropharyngeal cancer is 16 times higher in HPV-positive patients. In Europe and North America, HPV infection accounts for about 70 to 80% of oropharyngeal cancers.” (emphasis mine) Later, the same Merck Manual entry says, “Patients who are HPV-positive have a 5-yr survival of > 75% (and a 3-yr survival of almost 90%), whereas HPV-negative patients have a 5-yr survival of < 50%.” (again, my emphasis) This difference in the prognosis between the two types is not at all a trivial one.¹

As an “interdisciplinary sciences” major from 2006 through 2008, I had a student membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) because access to the broad spectrum of the sciences covered by the Science family of journals was crucial to my undergraduate thesis. Since 2011, I’ve paid for the “professional” membership, but never thought I’d use it to research a serious condition I had.ⁱⁱ

According to the American Cancer Society, as of February 2019, there is no FDA approved test for HPV in men², however, Wang et al., in Science Translational Medicine, reported on research into detecting HPV DNA in the blood plasma and saliva of individuals with head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs), noting that not all HNSCCs are created equal.³ The prognosis for patients with HNSCCs can vary greatly depending on exactly where in the head and neck it appears, corroborating the information I found on the Merck Manual site.

I live in Rapid City, South Dakota, and though one of the biggest employers in the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) used by the the US Census, it is still South Dakota. I prepared myself to fight to have my cancer tested for the HPV 16 genetic markers. On my first visit with my radiation oncologist on 22 October, I came armed with arguments as to why I ought to be tested for the HPV markers. Much to my surprise, the oncologist readily agreed and said he would order the tests of my biopsy sample.

Later that same day, I was scheduled to have every molar and pre-molar in my mouth extracted—a long story I’ve relegated to the endnotes.ⁱⁱⁱ While I was home recuperating a day or two later, I got a call from my “nurse navigator” to let me know that the surgical oncologist that took the initial biopsy had ordered the tests for HPV DNA as matter of course and that my cancer was indeed HPV-positive. Given the much more favorable prognosis for HPV-positive HNSCCs, I was understandably relieved. I was also very impressed, in the absence of an FDA-approved test, that the sophisticated lab-bench technique, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), was deployed in analyzing my biopsy as standard operating procedure.

Like I said before, we’re going to science the shit out of this. Stay tuned.

Works Cited

1. Merck Manual. ‘Oropharyngeal Squamous Cell Carcinoma - Ear, Nose, and Throat Disorders’ Merck Man. Prof. Ed. at <https://www.merckmanuals.com/professional/ear,-nose,-and-throat-disorders/tumors-of-the-head-and-neck/oropharyngeal-squamous-cell-carcinoma>15 Oct. 2019

2. American Cancer Society. ‘HPV and HPV Testing’ Am. Cancer Soc.-Cancer Z. (18 Feb. 2019). at <https://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/infectious-agents/hpv/hpv-and-hpv-testing.html>21 Oct. 2019

3. Wang, Y. et al. ‘Detection of Somatic Mutations and HPV in the Saliva and Plasma of Patients with Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinomas’ Sci. Transl. Med. 7, p.293ra104-293ra104; (24 Jun. 2015). doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aaa8507

Endnotes

i Based on the peer-reviewed literature I looked at thus far, there seems to be several sub-types of the human papilloma virus, and the one that causes genital warts is not as scary from the standpoint of cancer as some others.

ii I must confess that getting mail from the AAAS addressed to “Dr. Northrup” is a hoot. Once when updating my credit card billing information over the phone with the AAAS, I told them I only have a lowly undergraduate degree in the sciences. The person I was talking to said that because I am paying for the “professional” membership, the database they use to address USPS mail will prefix my name with “Dr.”

iii I have IBS-D, and the medication I take for it works by dialing down on the lubrication supplied to the lower GI tract. A downside of this medication, Amitriptyline, is that the moisture spigots are dialed down all over the body—leading to dry mouth, which can wreak havoc with ones’ oral health. I also grind my teeth, perhaps as an unconscious coping mechanism related to my ADHD. I had already quit using smokeless tobacco, and after the New Year, I planned on getting a huge amount of dental work done. The estimated cost after my dental insurance paid what they will cover was going to be in excess of $10,000—I planned to go Hollywood with implants, teeth whitening, the whole shebang.

Of course, being diagnosed with cancer made a hopeless wreck of my grand dental stratagem. Radiation therapy (radiotherapy) doesn’t usually affect the immune system, but if the target of the therapy is near bones, those bones ability to heal themselves. This means that any teeth that might possibly need to come out later on, had to come out now to allow time for my traumatized jaws to heal, before they go all Bruce Banner on me. This is why they pulled all my molars and premolars (bicuspids), leaving me with only my canines and incisors.

This means that at best, my grand dental stratagem will probably be restricted to dentures. It also means that for the next few years, I’ll be eating lots of soup and drinking lots of fruit/vegetable smoothies. It also occurred to me that I’ll need to watch my sodium intake as soups in restaurants and grocery stores can have obscene levels of sodium.

The Big “C”

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 6 Nov 2019 19:14:00 -0800

The Big “C”

On 15 October I learned I have cancer. More specifically, a squamous cell carcinoma currently sitting on my left tonsil and I’ve no doubt my 40+ years of using smokeless tobacco contributed to this development. For many people, learning they or a loved one have “cancer” is a devastating blow. Given the line of work I’m in, I’ve come to appreciate the concept of resiliency in the face of personal crises and try to aid clients as they seek a way through their individual struggles. Now, I have (yet another) opportunity to put into practice what I preach.

I’ve always been a half-full glass sort of person. If told I’m incapable of doing or learning something, I frequently take it as a personal challenge to prove the naysayers wrong. My ninth-grade algebra teacher, after barely passing his class, advised me not to take geometry in high school because, in his estimation, I would almost certainly fail. Admittedly, I was not particularly optimistic about my chances of mastering geometry at that point either, so I followed his advice until I graduated high school. Several years later though, I decided to teach myself algebra and trigonometry. Despite setbacks, I persisted and eventually successfully completed a year of university-level calculus—along with courses in calculus-based physics and electrical engineering.

In recent years I’ve developed a keen interest in the First and Second World Wars and through that topic, I’ve come to a profound admiration for Sir Winston S. Churchill, despite the occasionally valid points his later critics have made.ⁱ As the diagnosis process unfolded, the final line from Churchill’s “Their Finest Hour” speech of 18 June 1940, kept coming back to me.

"Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”¹

The phrase that stuck out for me was “...and so bear ourselves...” The way I “bear myself” in this coming struggle will, in the end, no matter the final outcome, say volumes about my character as a human being and, just perhaps, fortify others who will come to deal with similar challenges in their own lives.

While I do not relish the idea of telling my friends and family of this sobering news, the person I most dreaded telling was my mother. My mother is a very conservative evangelical Christian and was certain to see this as a literal “come to Jesus” moment. After a great deal of reflection, the tack I decided to take when breaking the news to my parents was to recognize and acknowledge the role their faith would play for them in providing comfort and solace in these circumstances. In turn, I pointed out since I do not share their faith, I asked them recognize and acknowledge the simple fact that the reason cancer no longer automatically entails a death sentence is not because an increase in the effectiveness of prayer, but because of science, and my strategy will be the same as that of the Mark Watney character in the film The Martian, “In the face of overwhelming odds, I’m left with only one option, I’m gonna have to science the shit out of this.”ⁱⁱ While not stranded on an otherwise uninhabited planet, it’s close enough for me.

From time to time as my journey proceeds, I will document here those of my thoughts I wish to share with what readers I may have.

Endnotes:

i Like any historical figure, Churchill's character, conduct, and legacy should judged by the standards of their time, not our own. As a great admirer of Abraham Lincoln (as was Churchill himself), I freely admit that, during his public life, Lincoln said things we would consider overtly racist today, or at least before the 2016 presidential election. Likewise, Churchill said things about India, and Indians like Gandhi and Nehru, that were incontestably racist by the standards of the 21st century.

Against this though, any intellectually honest critic of Churchill is obligated--otherwise, I'm not obligated to give a damn what they think--to acknowledge that Churchill was clear-sighted enough in 1931 to foresee the likely results of the British withdrawal from, and partitioning of, British India into a Hindu/Brahmin India and a Muslim-dominated Pakistan, in which as many 2 million people were killed when Britain withdrew in 1947.

ii During the press tours leading up the the release of the film The Martian, Andy Weir, the author of the novel on which the film was based, readily credits the line to the screenwriter Drew Goddard, frequently saying he can only wish he'd come up with it.

Works Cited:

1. ‘Their Finest Hour’ Int. Churchill Soc. (18 Jun. 1940). at <https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1940-the-finest-hour/their-finest-hour/>9 Oct. 2019

At Last, a Female Doctor Who

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 20:57:00 -0700

I’m not a frequent user of social media for the simple reason that I have adult ADHD—nor do I suffer fools gladly—so with all the idiots on social media, these ingredients come together to create a supermassive black hole ready to devour all my time. So I take a pass on social media. I did however look at web sites reporting on the social media reaction to the announcement that the new showrunner for Doctor Who (Who), previously the showrunner/creator of the crime drama Broadchurch, has cast Broadchurch actor Jodie Whittaker as the 13^th Doctor—the first female to play the role on an ongoing basis. I am jazzed at the prospect, but it saddens me to read the vitriolic reactions of what I can only hope is a small minority of some self-identified Who fans. Unfortunately, the online very negative reactions of these supposed “fans”ⁱ to this news has much in common with the backlash from a sub-population of supposed Star Trek “fans” surrounding the casting and characterization choices (among other things) of those behind the new Star Trek: Discovery series, set to premier this fall. I am addressing the disturbing political and cultural zeitgeist in the US (mostly) at length in another series on this blog, but as these retrograde trends are spreading to those who call themselves fans of the two most cherished science fiction franchises on television, Star Trek and Doctor Who, I have some things to say. Given the long-standing ethos of Doctor Who and Star Trek, one might be excused for being shocked by how much overlap there is between Whovians and Trekkers and Trump/BREXIT supporters, but fact that such people seem to exist is an indication how far we have yet to go.

My first exposure to science fiction was through Star Trek in the form of Star Trek: The Animated Series (TAS).ⁱⁱ I had always been interested in space, and even in grade school I would lay outside on clear, warm summer nights with Dad’s binoculars, a flashlight, and books about the stars and planets. In junior high, I made the happy discovery in the library of the paperback short-story adaptations of Star Trek: The Original Series (Star Trek: TOS), and TAS, by James Blish and Alan Dean Foster, respectively. My reaction was essentially “Wow! Space with stories!” Later, I found the robust moral compasses of the protagonists and the high-minded, optimistic vision it offered of humanity’s future resonated strongly with the ideals of the religious faith I was raised in, without the disturbing end-times eschatology.ⁱⁱⁱ

As I got older, I became aware of the iconic status of The Doctor, but I only got into Doctor Who after the 2005 “reboot” and was quickly sucked in—and for the record, I have never owned a Trek prop or uniform, but I do have a set of Who pub glasses and the sonic screwdrivers of Doctors’ 10 and 11, and I plan on getting the 13^th Doctor’s sonic as soon as they are available. Like the Trek franchise, Doctor Who has never shied away from challenging viewers to look at things from a different perspective and aspire to nobler ideals. Another way the character of The Doctor resonated with me is they have never suffered fools gladly^iv—probably because there is no room across the whole of space and time The Doctor can enter where they are not the smartest person there^v—even though others in the room dismiss The Doctor as a daft old coot or a younger, oddly-dressed nerd.^vi A female Doctor is entirely plausible from an “in-universe” perspective as other Time Lords have changed gender as a result of regeneration.^vii All Doctors have had to work through the choices made by their previous selves—the best recent example is in the Doctor Who 50^th Anniversary Special “The Day of The Doctor,” where the 10^th was the “man who regrets” and the 11^th was “the man who forgets” (or tried to) how they thought they ended the Time War. Throwing in a change in gender along with the other changes regeneration routinely brings makes for meaty storytelling and acting challenges with immense potential.^viii

As for the historically ignorant, loudmouthed puddingbrains complaining of some liberal, SJW “diversity” agenda being crammed down their throats by a shadowy cabal of liberal activists, the unfortunate reality is the progressive idealism embodied by franchises like Doctor Who and Star Trek left space dock on 23 November, 1963 and then again on September 8, 1966 respectively. On November 22^nd, 1968 the Star Trek episode “Plato’s Stepchildren” aired showing the first black/white kiss on prime-time American television—a mere seven months after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated—nor was the controversial nature of the scene and its timing lost on the writers, director, or the cast. Also in the original Trek was the Vulcan philosophy of “Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combination” which was presented as noble ideal worth aspiring to. In the run-up to the premier of Star Trek: Voyager in January 1995, a small, but loud and obnoxious, minority of Trek fans were utterly apoplectic at the idea of a female starship captain headlining a Trek series for the first time. Were these past plot/storytelling choices instances of some SJW agenda being pushed down viewers’ throats 20 to 40 years ago as well? From the apparent mindset of many of those objecting to the 13^th Doctor’s gender or the casting/plot of Discovery, it seems likely they would have thought so—at least if they’d been old enough to remember. It also raises the question of why the hell anyone with attitudes like theirs even watched Doctor Who or Star Trek in the first place, let alone those that claim to have been “fans” for decades? Do they suffer from some sort of cognitive impairment or does a subconscious cognitive dissonance usually filter out the bits that conflict with their contemptible world-view?

Thoughtful, intelligent science fiction in general has an established history of challenging the conventions, prejudices, and preconceptions of the audience/readers of which their authors, creators, producers, actors, etc., can justly be proud of. Science fiction at its best tells stories that expand our minds, enlarge our horizons, and challenge us to reassess our perceptions, both of ourselves and others. This is how both Doctor Who and Star Trek have lasted over 50 years, by speaking to the consciences of their viewers/fans and, with varying degrees of subtlety, raising our consciousness, individually and collectively, to the possibility of our being better tomorrow than we were today.

I also have a further point to make for those on both sides of the new, female Doctor Who debate. Given the half of all human beings born female, it is frankly preposterous, after the nearly 55 years of the franchise’s existence, for the title character to never, ever take on the form of a human female following a regeneration. However, I have encountered a small subset of the overwhelming positive online reactions supportive of the new Doctor, which then went on to express an apparently sincere wish to see future regenerations of The Doctor be representative of their specific, minority community. And just to be clear, I am not referring to the sarcastic comments along the lines of: “Next they’re going to have the Doctor be a transgendered, left-handed amputee with dyslexia.” After the past 50+ years of Doctor Who, a Doctor resembling the 50% of humanity that are our mothers, daughters, sisters, and nieces, etc., is not PC pandering. However, the world has given us Trump and Brexit, so I am less skeptical than I was of the ludicrously, ridiculously improbable actually coming to pass, so there may well SJWs advocating a sort of “scorched earth” agenda which more sane, liberal, broad-minded human beings might mistake as headlines from The Onion.^ix

One of the primary marks of our shared humanity is our passion for stories. The reason storytellers tell the stories they do are as unique and individual as the storytellers themselves. Passively absorbing stories is easy, but engaging our higher cognitive faculties to think about the stories we hear, and maybe even learn something from them is much more difficult because doing that requires some minimal amount of courage, a willingness to challenge our own thinking. More difficult still is creating and telling such stories and doing it well. Aided and abetted by the Internet, it is fast becoming a cliché for small subsets of fans to protest loudly whenever their favorite franchise goes in a direction they disapprove of, and this seems to be especially true of science fiction and other fantastical genres. Some feel there is way too little “diversity,” while others think the creators have sold out to the SJW agenda—though I doubt “fans” at either pole could coherently explain what such an agenda might be, even if their lives depended on it. However much the fans of any franchise might feel personally invested in it, they don’t own it. Since the first glimmerings of spoken language arose in our Pleistocene ancestors—perhaps even before—stories helped us understand and explain the world around us, including our own existence. We share those explanations and understandings—the good, the bad, and/or how it might be better—with others so we might understand them and they us. Whether it was the first Sumerian scribe to record their elaborations on the already ancient oral Epic of Gilgamesh on cuneiform tablets, a lone 21^st century self-published author like Andy Weir, or the hundreds of people making creative contributions to TV and movie franchise, they are entitled to tell the stories they want to tell, the way they want to tell them. If anyone in the audience is rubbed the wrong way by the stories of others, thinking all’s right with the world as is, then they can either read/listen/watch other stories. Or better yet, create the sort of stories they want to hear.

Among the many reasons J.R.R. Tolkien (and yes, I’ve read nearly all of his stuff too) gave for writing The Lord of the Rings was for the challenge of telling a long, complex tale that would engage readers and perhaps even move or inspire them. Online, Whovians of both sexes have commented about how, from an “in-universe” standpoint, Whittaker’s Doctor will have to break through entrenched gender stereotypes to be taken seriously before she can get on with her real work of saving puddingbrains throughout the cosmos. I noted earlier how, from the very beginning, part of The Doctor’s shtick was being initially dismissed—sometimes as a harmless annoyance, other times as an incompetent, dangerous, unstable element in the crisis du jour—especially by those who ought to take The Doctor seriously. The best example of this is, of course, Doctors 4 and 6 (Tom Baker and Colin Baker, respectively), I mean, just look at those outfits! Since 1963, The Doctor has been an archetype for a protagonist other story characters will initially dismiss as a nutcase.

The challenge Chibnall has set for himself and the other writers for the 13^th Doctor is how they maintain continuity with the essential characteristics of all the previous Doctors—not suffering fools gladly and knowing, whatever room she (going forward) enters, she’ll be automatically the smartest occupant—with the new twist of the character’s in-story quirky or eccentric sartorial tastes might not be the only reason The Doctor is not taken seriously at first. For Ms. Whittaker, the challenge will be to make her Doctor believable in terms of the long back-story of the character, yet subtly informed by the long-overdue change in perspective being perceived, superficially at least, as a human female affords. Having seen the first series of Broadchurch, I’m sure she’ll be brilliant.

When still a religious believer, I was saddened by the idea that no one would ever know if someday, a united, peaceful (at least amongst ourselves), curious, courageous, compassionate, and adventurous humanity would have spread outward to the stars—because of the whole “rapture” thing. Now, years later, as an atheist and a rationalist, I am still enough of a romantic idealist to find it bittersweet indeed that I personally will never know how the story of humankind will turn out, but my younger self’s hope for humanity’s future remains. Yet even among self-described fans of the two most hopeful, forward-thinking science fiction franchises ever, it looks as though there may indeed be substantial numbers of our fellow human beings we will never be able to convince that such a future is worth striving for. What we will do then I do not know.

iMy use of scare quotes around “fan/s” is intended to suggest such fans might not have a clue about the broad ethos of the shows of which they claim to be “fans.”

iiI have only the vaguest recollection of seeing the Apollo 11 landing on television on July 20, 1969, about a month before my 5^th birthday. The original run of Star Trek ended the month before the landing in June, 1969.

iiiIronically, as an adult, it was my own moral revulsion at my fellow Christians who cared more about valuing the “correct” beliefs than they did about believing in, and living by, the ideals they claim to value.

ivUnless it was part of The Doctor’s overall tactics/strategy.

vBear with me, I’m trying to avoid using gendered pronouns and still be somewhat readable.

viThat aspect of the Doctor’s character—at least as they had been written and played by white guys—appealed to me because after being diagnosed as “hyperactive” at the age of five (in 1970), in 2007 I was diagnosed as having adult ADHD—and with an IQ well above the 99^th percentile. From the age of 5 to the age of 42, I always had the feeling everyone else knew or understood something that always seemed to elude me, only to learn the reason I always felt somewhat out-of-place, was that every time I entered a room, I was quite likely one of the brightest people in it—feeling out-of-place as a result.

viiOr maybe “regenderation”? My typo might have been a Freudian slip. LoL

viiiIn the end the 12^th Doctor never knew he had gotten through to Missy, though he felt he had come close. Perhaps the 13^th Doctor’s gender was due a subconscious desire to understand why he thought he was ultimately not able to get through to Missy. If so, I call dibs on the credit for any story ideas arising from this.

ixPerhaps there is the equivalent of “Poe’s Law” for the more extreme forms of feminism—along with may other “isms.”

The Economics of the Moral Compass

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 28 Jun 2017 18:50:00 -0700

Why do some people consider it a profound moral wrong for government or individuals to legally recognize a gay or lesbian marriage while others feel, just as profoundly, that to deny the legal right and benefits of traditional marriage to a deeply-committed gay or lesbian couple is a violation of basic human rights, simple human decency, and a moral wrong? How is it that we can come to such diametrically opposed answers to so many of the same moral questions? When we describe something as being “morally wrong,” exactly who (or what) is being wronged? Is a path through the minefield of the deeply-held beliefs of our fellow human beings even possible? My intent is not to tell anyone what to think, but I do intend to present some ways of thinking about the problems and specific elements that must be part of whatever answers we may come to.

Two modern sciences are especially relevant in trying to answer the questions posed above, both of which have roots that arguably go back to the Ancient Greeks and, during the Enlightenment, were called moral philosophy and political economy. In hindsight, it is not a coincidence that the Scottish philosopher, Adam Smith, wrote the seminal works that essentially founded the disciplines that today we call moral psychology and economics, The Theory of Moral Sentiments in 1759 and An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations in 1776. Just how tightly intertwined moral issues are with economic issues in modern societies is easily seen in the annual battle over the federal budget in the U.S. where economic and budgetary priorities are often dictated by the moral/ethical priorities of differing constituencies or pressure groups. The issue of sex education in public schools is a good example; do we spend the money on "abstinence only" programs or do we spend it on programs that aim to prevent unwanted teen pregnancies and the spread of STDs. Where we, both individually and collectively, come down on that one is determined largely by our moral reasoning around human sexuality. I will get to such issues in time, but to make my point, I must first discuss a sub-field of both economics (a social science) and psychology (a behavioral science) that has only been around since the 1960s called behavioral economics.

Economists going back to Adam Smith assumed that economic actors–business owners, consumers, investors, etc.–were rational actors pursuing their individual aims in the objectively most efficient way possible. Subsequent generations of economists made this assumption explicit by defining "man" in a strictly economic context as an agent that seeks only to maximize his store of wealth by the most effective and rational means possible. As national economies grew and became ever more inter-connected throughout the 19th century, the amount of economic data available to economists grew by leaps and bounds. In parallel with this, advanced analytic mathematical techniques were developed that allowed the creation of mathematical models of economic systems where all actors–buyers, sellers, producers, suppliers, etc.–have the same information as the other parties and, in that context, act rationally in pursuit of their individual ends. The quality or robustness of any mathematical model of a system, whether of the gravitationally-bound Earth-Moon system, the climate, or an economy is judged by comparing the performance of the model against what has happened in the past, will happen in the future, in controlled experiments, or a combination of all of these. As economists in the first half of the 20th century applied ever more sophisticated models to the wealth of economic data available to them, the abstractions of human beings as rational actors grew increasingly untenable as their models often diverged from what it seems “economic actors” actually do in the real world.

Of the nations that fought on either side in World War II, not only was the United States the only one come out of it with their economy intact, but it flourished beyond anyone's most optimistic imaginings in the years and decades afterwards. In this economic boom, the number of roughly equivalent types of consumer goods, e.g. vacuums, toasters, televisions, radios, automobiles, etc., that people could choose from grew faster than consumers could keep up with. It was essential that manufacturers and retailers—and the advertising and marketing firms they retained—understood how consumers think and how best to pitch their products so consumers would choose theirs over the available alternatives. Over the last 50+ years, advertising and marketing firms have taken advantage of insights into human decision-making and cognition from the behavioral sciences.

One reason the rational actor model fails is that most of our decisions, even the big ones, like one’s college major or who to marry¹, are the result of a heuristic process, such as common sense, rules of thumb, and educated guesses in which our emotions, rather than any sort of rational analysis. Usually, heuristic processes are not rationally coherent, but they do have the advantage of a much lower cognitive load—and are often the most emotionally palatable in that moment. In other cases, as shown in a study published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2000², the authors describe an experiment that sought to find out if customers’ choices of “free” beer samples in a college town brewpub were influenced by others in their party. In the first variation of the experiment (I’ll call it “A”), customers verbally indicated their choices within the hearing of others at the table. Then, after having a chance to taste their selection, they were presented with a card asking them what their selection was and what they thought of it. In the next variation (“B”), customers indicated their order on a card—essentially a secret ballot, then, just as in the first iteration, customers were asked to rate their enjoyment of their choice.

When the results of both variations of the experiment were tallied, researchers found that when everyone else at the table could hear their order, few, if any, chose the same beer as any of the others. However, in the “secret ballot” variation, there was a great deal more clustering of customers choices. When the scientists looked at customers’ post-tasting feedback, for round “A” they found that those whose orders were among the last to be taken were less enthusiastic with their “choice.” In round B, when each customer was unaware of what others ordered they had a much higher opinion of their choice. The researchers noted that these findings were exactly what one would expect to find when behaviors and choices are dominated by a need for uniquenessⁱ, and in this context is called “Consumers' Need for Uniqueness (CNFU)”—and yes, in the world of consumer research it really is a “thing.”ⁱⁱ Our culture places a high value on individual uniqueness and independence of mind and in social situations—especially when we are hoping to impress others with our independence of mind—this need can often outweigh our own preferences.

Some critics have made the accusation that much of the recent research in the cognitive and behavioral sciences—and by extension, the researchers—is aiding and abetting in the cynical—I’ll be blunt—manipulation of consumer-citizensⁱⁱⁱ (i.e. us), especially in the application of such research to the field of marketing.^iv While I personally do not subscribe to such conspiracy theories, researchers in social psychology and behavioral economics are often attached to universities’ schools of Management and/or Business, but I think Hanlon's razor³ more than adequately accounts for this. It is also worth mentioning that a substantial share of current research—and thus researchers—are focused on helping professionals of all kinds, as well as consumer-citizens, make better decisions by pointing out the blind spots, biases, and fallacies we are all prone to. Even though we are not the rational economic actors that economists since Adam Smith believed we are, all is not lost. Irrational we may be, but our irrationality is not random, it falls into discernible patterns that we as individuals can be aware of, and empowered by the revelations of behavioral economics—and with practice and self-discipline—we can learn to make better economic and financial decisions and choices.

Next time, as promised, we will segue to the field of moral psychology and see how our moral reasoning can go awry.

Works Cited

1. Ariely, D. ‘Ch. 1-The Truth about Relativity’ Predict. Irrational. p.10; (Harper: New York, NY, 2008).

2. Ariely, D. & Levav, J. ‘Sequential Choice in Group Settings: Taking the Road Less Traveled and Less Enjoyed’ J. Consum. Res. 27, p.279–290; (Dec. 2000). at <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=keh&AN=3938690&site=ehost-live>23 Jun. 2017

3. ‘Hanlon’s Razor’ Wikipedia. (27 Apr. 2017). at <https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Hanlon%27s_razor&oldid=777543724>27 Jun. 2017

Endnotes

i Individuals’ “need for uniqueness” is a well-validated aspect of human psychology (see: https://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjh_sazrd7UAhXJ4IMKHVSeA8QQPAgD#hl=en&q=need+for+uniqueness+theory&spf=1498578169874). The scenario of a woman being distressed at the thought of showing up to a party in the same dress as someone else may be more than a mere comedic cliché.

ii http://www.sjdm.org/dmidi/Consumers%27_Need_for_Uniqueness.html

iii Apparently, the hyphenated word “consumer–citizens” raises the hackles of some folks, but the reason I decided to go with it is that so often, the same biases, fallacies, and blind spots that affect our behavior as consumers are the same ones that influence our politics. A question that has arisen in the last 35 or so years that illustrates this commonality of the two spheres of modern life is: “Why so many working-class, less well-off folks vote Republican, against their own economic self-interest?”

iv See: https://books.google.com/books?id=IeRWCgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=isbn:9781583671610&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiKi-z4ttTUAhWs5YMKHY-GB8QQ6AEIJjAA#v=onepage&q=greatest%20concerted%20attempt&f=false, p.276-7

Initially started at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_advertising#Influence, then look for Robert McChesney.

My Moral Compass-Pt 2-Calibration

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Tue, 7 Feb 2017 18:56:00 -0800

Preface:

Before I start throwing around words like “moral” and “conscience” even more than I already have, I need to unpack what I mean—and just as importantly, do not mean—when I use them.

I often use “moral compass” and “conscience” interchangeably, but whichever term one favors, it is the entirely natural, materialistic, neurological and cognitive products of our evolutionary history as social animals. Like nearly every other natural trait, it is highly variable, with individuals falling somewhere along a spectrum of variation. That variability also makes it possible for the conscience/moral sense to be shaped by “nurture,” i.e. our culture and social environments—sometimes in positive ways, and at other times, not so much.ⁱ

It is quite likely that even before religion became “organized” some 12,000 years ago it figured out how to hijack an adherent’s moral sense and using the sense’s natural malleability to manipulate and control its adherents. The monotheistic faiths have since refined this manipulation into an art form. We see this today when the faithful go around condemning, for instance, what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms as immoral, and often for no other reason than the fears of the faithful that they may become collateral damage when God rains down fire and brimstone on the Godless. A good litmus test for what are and are not legitimate moral issues is whether they can be reduced to something like:

“If we allow people to do X, or permit them to avoid doing Y, then God will be displeased and then “bad things” might happen and people might get hurt.”ⁱⁱ

Allowing fear, anger, anxiety, and distrust to dictate our actions is an abject capitulation to the darker side of human nature and an active repudiation of the highest moral and ethical aspirations of the human conscience, or in the words with which President Lincoln closed his First Inaugural Address: “...the better angels of our nature.”

My Moral Compass-Pt 2-Calibration

However much it may have felt like it when the 50 + percent of the Americans that cast their presidential ballots for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (me among them) woke up on November 9th, we were not the victims of a terrible transporter accident—à la Star Trek—suddenly stranded in a dystopian mirror universe where the Axis powers won WWII or something equally bonkers. When the electoral college met on December 19th, 2016, Clinton’s popular vote exceeded that of Donald Trump’s by 2.86 million—nonetheless, on January 20th, 2017 Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Michael (Mike) R. Pence, were sworn in as the 45th President and the 48th Vice President, respectively. Yes, it really happened, and it will be part of the new reality that we, and the rest of the planet, will need to deal with for perhaps generations to come. The cultural, political, religious, demographic, and economic forces that converged to enable Trump’s occupying the Oval Office go back at least decades, and some can be traced all the way to the Colonial era.

I had originally planned to make the argument that the vacuous depths to which our civil and political discourse would sink in the 2016 elections was presaged in no small degree by the Rush Limbaugh–Sandra Fluke controversy, but something happened in my own life over the Christmas holiday that I think is a far more powerful vignette to use in making my point than a re-hash of news items from over four years ago.

Since my unexpected return to Rapid City, South Dakota over 10 years ago (damn, has it been that long…?), I have accompanied my parents to Christmas Eve services at one of the two churches they attend. Fortunately, I have yet to burst into flame or have my head rotate through 360º as I entered. I love Christmas and I am not above being moved by the standard Christmas narrative, and like Linus Van Pelt, I can still quote from memory the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 2, verses 8-16. Then again, I am also moved to tears every time I read, and thanks to Sir Peter Jackson, watch, Sam carry Frodo those last agonizing steps to the summit of Mount Doom—demonstrating that the mere fact that one finds a narrative profoundly moving has no bearing at all on the historicity of the events described in the narrative. One of the most enjoyable Christmas Eve services I have been to was one that was structured around the historical back-stories of some of the best loved Christmas carols—and this quite naturally appealed to my inner history buff.

So it happened that on the evening of December 24th, 2016, I was at Christ Church in Rapid City, South Dakota—the same church where, several years before, I had so enjoyed learning things I did not know about some of my favorite carols. My mother has a very high opinion of the pastor, Richard Wells, whom she describes as being a “very learned man.” This year’s Christmas Eve message was titled “This Baby Changed the World.” The pastor opened by noting the variety of calendar systems around the world, many of which we now associate with one religious tradition or another. All of which is true—but, I am saddened to have to report that it was downhill from there. He related how the calendar used in republican Rome dated years from “the founding of the city”—which is certainly true, but when he began mocking pre-Imperial Rome for this, I had to wonder if this “learned man” has actually ever read I or II Kings (or the other “historical” books of the Old Testament) because they are chock-a-block with references to such-and-such an event having occurred “in the N^th year of the reign of king X.”ⁱⁱⁱ

Next, adopting a conspiratorial tone, he teased his audience by promising to reveal the true motivations behind the reforms of the Roman calendar began by Julius Caesar and continued by his successors to sync the civil calendar of what was by then the Roman Empire to the seasons—which is why it later came to be called the Julian Calendar. According to Pastor Wells, the eminent practicality of having a calendar that accurately tracked the seasons, providing a much needed uniformity when keeping far-flung Roman Empire fed, was merely a smokescreen. As far as this “learned man” was concerned, the “real” reason for the Julian calendar reforms was that it was an elaborate plot by Satan himself to distract a fallen humanity from the advent of the incarnation of God on Earth™, Jesus of Nazareth^®. Perhaps feeling he was on a roll, he then started mocking the current Dalai Lama, Tibetan Buddhism, and generally, any religion that was not his sort of Christianity. When recounting his visit to the Dalai Lama’s website, the “learned man” spoke in contemptuous, sarcastic tones of the emphasis in Tibetan Buddhism on virtues such as “compassion,” “understanding,” “forbearance,” “peace,” and “humility.” Dripping with sneering contempt, his voice rising to a crescendo, he spread his arms, exaggeratedly beseeching his flock to answer the question posed by what he took to be the current Dalai Lama’s essential message, “Can’t we all just get along?” Without giving the congregants time to digest his conspiratorial ravings, he answered his own rhetorical question with a resounding “No!”

Back when I still considered myself a believer, I would have been surprised at this because (as I believed at the time) we are God’s children and so—saved or not—virtues like “compassion,” “understanding,” etc. were written in the hearts of all of humanity by God and that heeding the call of those virtues was a first step on the road to salvation, and as such should be encouraged. Instead, this “learned” man cranked the wheel and exited the moral high road, warning his audience that all this talk of “compassion,” “empathy,” and the relief of human suffering, etc. was in truth an elaborate trap set by Satan himself to lead Christians astray.^iv A cold foreboding came over me when I realized that no nuanced exceptions were forthcoming. For the remainder of the service, the only thing preventing me from standing up and walking out was my love and affection for my mother and the desire not to see her shamed and embarrassed publicly.

Even when I was a serious, sincere Christian, I would have found anyone’s advocacy of such sentiments morally contemptible. In my teens, there came a point when I became aware of facts some might use to cast doubt on the truth of the Gospel, such as the fact that the law Code of Hammurabi long predates that of the Ten Commandments, or that the Golden Rule was known to ancient civilizations and cultures long before the first versions of it appeared in the Old Testament, let alone the New. The apologia I constructed to account for the universality of the human conscience, especially in cultures that predate Judaism and Christianity all those years ago, applies with no less moral force to what I heard on Christmas Eve 2016 than when this line of thought first occurred to me some 35 years ago and runs something like this:

“The very fact that all human beings have an innate, universal response to, a longing for, things like mercy, justice, fairness—and are repelled by cruelty and the mistreatment and abuse of those unable to defend themselves^v—is precisely because we are all God’s creations, and while we are born as sinners, each one of us has a conscience, bestowed on us by God, that is no less a part of our humanity than is our sinful nature. Without an innate conscience to initially guide one towards the light of salvation, how could anyone ever recognize it when they found it? As Christians, we are called to be lights for Christ in this world, but if, as Christians, our words and conduct are abhorrent to the consciences’ of those we seek to “save,” then it is really we that are in need of being “saved.”

In writing the above, I adopted the voice of the Christian I once was, yet even as the atheist I am today, I would make essentially the same the argument—that irrespective of claims made regarding the relative merits of religious faiths or ethical, philosophic, and political systems—to the degree that they are contrary to the highest, most noble aspirations of the untainted, innate human conscience, they are an abomination.

There is a common thread, running through all of human history, from the Atlantic slave trade of the 15th through 19th centuries, the slaughter of indigenous populations by European colonists, the concentration camps and gas chambers of Nazi Germany, to the “ethnic cleansing” that plagued Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Bloc in the early 1990’s. One of the first steps leading to these horrors—and many others not mentioned—is when one group becomes convinced that members of another group are somehow not human enough to be legitimate recipients of the proddings of one’s conscience.

In further essays in this series, we will examine some possible specifics of how this came about and what we might be able to do about it.

iThe ability of most primates (including us) to pick up an object with our opposable-thumb-equipped hand and throw it is an evolved biological trait, but doing it well—as in consistently hitting one’s target—is a skill that has to be learned. So while just about anyone will improve with practice, that does not mean we can all perform such a task well enough to make the majors. Likewise, it has long been accepted that the human ability to acquire and use (spoken or signed) language is a biological trait that has evolved. Additionally, evidence for the evolution of a number sense in humans—and other species—is rapidly growing.

Though our scientific understanding of how the human moral sense evolved is yet in its infancy, it is clearly tied to the sort of altruistic, pro-social behaviors seen in other social mammals from bonobos (pygmy chimpanzees), African bush elephants, to dolphins.

As spoken languages became sufficiently sophisticated in our ancestors, our interactions with each other were able to become increasingly complex and nuanced. Just as rules of grammar and identifiable parts of speech—nouns, verbs, subjects, objects, etc. appeared and were eventually codified for each language—so too would rules for how to maintain the person-to-person and group-to-group relationships upon which our survival depended, appear.

iiI almost laughed out loud when I re-read this because it reminded me of that Mafia movie cliché: “Ya know, it’s a nice place ya got here. It’d be a real shame if sumthin’ happened to it, eh, Knuckles?”

Actually, the idea that organized religion shares aspects of organized-crime protection rackets kind of makes sense and as a quick Google search revealed, I’m not the first to see the similarity.

iiiSee, for example, 1 Kings 16:23: “In the thirty-first year of Asa king of Judah, Omri became king of Israel, and he reigned twelve years, six of them in Tirzah.” (NIV)

ivIn many ways, evangelical/fundamentalist Christianity is the most elaborate and widely-believed conspiracy theory ever cooked up by the human mind.

vYeah, what about those bits in the Bible about taking care of widows and orphans, eh?

My Moral Compass-Pt 1-Origins

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sun, 20 Nov 2016 20:20:00 -0800

Introductory Note:

Though I am now an atheistⁱ, I was not always so. Until my late teens, I was a very sincere, devout, Evangelical Christian, and my younger self took that faith very seriously indeed. In describing my thinking and reasoning of that younger self, I have endeavored to treat it with all the seriousness I did at that time. My use of capitalizations and symbols such as “TM” and the registered trademark symbol comes, it is fair to say, from my 2016 self. My reason for doing this, is to make the point that my younger self’s (okay, I kind of feel like I’m trying to write a Doctor Who episode) understanding of things like God’s will and/or what the most important parts of Christianity did not, in the end, match that of the Christians among whom I spent my formative years.

Forging My Moral Compass-Pt 1-Origins

Raised in an Evangelical Christian home, from an early age I was taught that it is wrong to bear false witness, and that what is, or is not, actually true, really matters. God, I was also taught, is a just God, and it was our duty to follow His example and strive for justice here on Earth. Being a thoughtful, reflective youth, I reasoned that since God was omnibenevolent, the source of all that is good in creation, it must follow that the highest, most virtuous ideals to which humanity can aspire were placed in the human heart and mind by God. While no one can ever fully achieve those aspirations, to honestly and humbly strive to do what we can, each of us according to our own lights, is surely the most ennobling and edifying journey a human being can undertake. Considering myself a Truly Sincere Christian Believer™ (TSCB) at the time, to do otherwise seemed to me to be contrary to God's Will®. I also thought, quite reasonably in my view, that the depth and sincerity of others’ Christian commitments would be manifested in their words and deeds too.

Alongside my religious upbringing, I was also a bright, inquisitive kid with a profound curiosity about the world around me, and was especially interested in science and history. I would lay outside at night in a sleeping bag, Dad’s binoculars, and books about the stars and just gaze in wonder for hours. I went through phases where I believed in ghosts, Bigfoot, and UFOs, but deep down inside I was always a skeptical, critical thinker—and yes, I never did get a straight answer on just were Cain found a wife after being marked and banished for the murder of his brother, Abel. By the time I reached my teens, my insatiable curiosity led to my being an avid reader—mostly science, ancient civilizations, lost cities, etc.,..and yes...science fiction—with a speed, vocabulary, and comprehension typically three or four grade levels above my classmates at school.ⁱⁱ

In my early teens, and still a committed, believing Christian, I had begun to see things I found troubling. Growing up, I remember singing songs like:

“Jesus loves the little children,

All the children of the world.

Red and yellow, black and white,

All are precious in His sight,

Jesus loves the little children of the world.”

I took these words to heart and was, quite understandably, very disturbed when the son of our church’s pastor, someone I considered a role model, casually referred to Native Americans as “rezzers” and African Americans as “darkies.” I distinctly remember thinking, “What happened to ‘Red and yellow, black or white, They are precious in His sight?’” At the time, I was profoundly troubled by this, but I thought it must be me. Perhaps there was some incredible epiphany others had been graced with that I had not. Lacking any “herd instinct,” I was never the sort to get into fights under the bleachers at school football games, nor did I really get all the hostility between different faiths, but I did believe that the Christianity I knew had the “truth,” or near enough so, that someday, the apparent contradictions between what I observed and what I believed would be resolved on the basis that my religion was “true.”

In high school, my peers and I were constantly reminded of all the temptations “out there” in the godless, sinful world and how important it was to resist them. The music we listened to, the people we associated with, the words we used, the activities we engaged in, what we stood for, what we took stands against—it was impressed upon us that our choices can either redound to the credit of our Christian Witness^©, or they can fatally undermine it. Obviously then, our words and actions have downstream consequences, not only for ourselves, but for others. Having learned to loathe hypocrisy, I considered it incumbent on anyone that called themselves a “Christian” to proactively consider possible unintended consequences of what they say and do, because like a math teacher, God would insist that we show our work.

We were also cautioned to avoid the company of the “wrong crowd” lest our “walk with Jesus” suffer and/or by presenting an un-Christ-like example, we might recklessly endanger unsaved souls by acting in ways which discredited not only our Christian Witness^©, but that of Christians generally. As a genuine TSCB™, I had no wish to be responsible anyone's soul being damned for all eternity. Being idealistic—“idealistic” in the sense that the wider, secular world would recognize—I wanted to be one of the “good guys”—and In my youthful naiveté, I thought doing both would not cause any conflicts—after all, if Christians were to be shining lights of “goodness” in a sinful world, it was obvious that the “goodness” had to be the sort that would be recognizable to make a positive impression on the “unsaved.”

Now, looking back 40 or so years, I realize that my Christianity influenced my idealism a great deal less than I assumed at the time. I now think it had more to do with the good guys/bad guys, heroes vs villains narratives depicted on TV, moviesⁱⁱⁱ, and in books. Personal experience also contributed to my idealism. I was always small for my age, and was bullied off and on in elementary and junior high school. Eventually I learned to defend myself and found that once you stand up to most bullies, being lazy and not very bright, they sought out only the easiest targets—at least in the late 1970s and early '80s^iv. Having been the victim of bullying myself, I felt empathy for others so victimized and stuck up for others being bullied.^v The fact that I never saw any of my peers that thought of themselves as Good Christian Teens® come to the defense of someone being bullied only added to my growing disappointment.

When I left home for boot camp after graduating high school^vi and became more aware of current events and the history behind them, the disconnects between what Christians as whole said they believed in and what they actually did grew glaringly obvious—and morally repugnant. One of the largest fault lines ruptured in my early 20s—in the mid-1980s there were several high-profile stories about anti-abortion activists that had conspired to violently attack abortion clinics and in some cases, actually murder abortion providers. My personal moral compass led me to expect Christian leaders to thunderously denounce such acts from every pulpit in the land because somewhere in my moral development, I picked up the odd little notion that there are some ends that can never justify the means undertaken to achieve them. Instead, the only voice I heard was my own—accompanied only by a chorus of crickets. That “moderate” Christians, as individuals, congregations, and denominations, across the nation, kept their silence, and refusing to condemn, in no uncertain terms such violence in the name of God, Jesus, or whatever, was (and is) morally contemptible.^vii By that point I had already arrived at what one might describe as an agnostic Deism. But from that point on, any remaining shreds of moral or ethical credibility Christianity might have had, leftovers from my childhood, were gone, forever.

Amazingly, after over a quarter century since realizing I was an atheist, and after having spoken and written about my journey so many times before, it was only in the course of writing this that I had something of an epiphany—a bit ironic, given the original meaning of “epiphany” of an experience of the divine. For as long as I can remember, what I thought made Christianity the "true" religion was that at its core was an abiding belief in, and a commitment to live by, a set of values—the very values that had so powerfully resonated with the proddings of my own innate conscience, values and virtues that felt self-evidently right. The "Christianity" that in the end I rejected, seemed to care more about valuing the right beliefs. This pattern of starting out believing in the right values, only for it to flip, whether by design or not, into valuing the right beliefs, will be a recurring theme throughout this series.

Below are but a sample—not an exhaustive catalog—of the values and virtues I feel obligated to uphold. Some of them had their genesis in my Christian upbringing, while other did not. Regardless of the context in which I became conscious of them, I have striven to adhere to them.

Empathy
Justice—Just as an example, I accept that there may be some crimes, so heinous, that the guilty party’s life ought to be forfeit. On the basis of Old Testament scripture, many protestant denominations do in fact argue in favor of capitol punishment. For the sake of argument, let us suppose they are correct in doing so and that executing those found guilty of certain crimes is God’s Will®. However, if God is just, then it would be utter folly indeed to assume that He would not demand those that claim to be acting in His Name®, take great care that they execute the right person! For a Christian in the 21^st century to brush off the 340+ people wrongly convicted—20 of them on death row—many exonerated by DNA evidence, is an unconscionable act of bearing false witness.¹ If the God they believe in truly exists, they should all start praying now that he have mercy on their souls.
Humility—including a tolerance of ambiguity, or in the words of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland during the English Civil Wars of 1642–1651—"I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think is it possible you may be mistaken."
Belief, without understanding, is little more than prideful ignorance
Ends do not always justify means, and if someone tries to convince you otherwise, run!
Chattel slavery—one human being “owning” another, in the sense that we own our car or our pets—is, was, and always will be wrong^viii
Physical, intellectual, and moral courage are all of a piece
Do not demand from others what you do not demand from yourself
Question everything—even those things others say you should not—and you’ll fall for nothing
Be skeptical of any person, institution, or ideology that attempts to appeal to our fears—of others, the new, the different, the unknown, and the unfamiliar—as they have only their best interests in mind, and no one else (more on this later)

My native human conscience, when applied to the Evangelical Christian environment I was raised in, is what finally compelled me to leave religion behind and eventually, reject supernatural beliefs altogether. In Part 2, I will examine how we, as a nation, became more concerned with valuing the right beliefs—often utterly uncoupled from empirical facts and/or evidence—than with believing, and living by, the right values, and how these failures fed into the existential crisis the United States found itself in during the 2016 presidential campaign that ended with the election of Donald J. Trump as the 45^th President of the United State (POTUS).

1. ‘Innocence Project-Cases’. Innocence Proj. at <http://www.innocenceproject.org/all-cases >20 Nov. 2016

iAs Richard Dawkins has observed, it is nonsensical, and even harmful, to say that someone was “born a X”; where X is a religious faith—the only real exception is “Jew,” which would then look like: “She was born a Jew, but is now non-practicing.” I would, in a tongue-and-cheek way, be happy to agree with “Mark was born a pantheist...” because I was new, and everything looked and felt supernatural.

iiIronically, by the time I was in high school, I was in the adult Sunday School classes at my church, and it was not infrequently that someone suggested I should consider going into the ministry.

iiiFortunately, my parents did not forbid my siblings and I going to movies as the parents of some of the kids I went to church with did.

ivNow parents have to worry that the bullies might be carrying a gun.

vThis is an area where my religious upbringing did make a lasting contribution to my personal moral compass by reinforcing my loathing of hypocrisy. As a young teen, I noticed that too many groups/communities that were persecuted or suffered discrimination in the past did not get the moral of their own stories, later failing to defend other groups suffering similar injustices. The Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies were established by groups fleeing religious persecution in England but upon arriving in the New World, showed no compunctions about treating dissenters in their own midst exactly as they were treated before leaving England.

viI did not expect to spend 20 years in the military at the time, and I’m still somewhat astounded that I lasted that long.

viiThe phenomenon of more moderate, less extreme religious believers, failing to rebuke the extremists in their ranks is found to a much greater extent in Islam, but that fact in no way, shape of form lets Christianity off the hook. Put it this way, how incredibly impressive would it be if Christianity openly and publicly demonstrates that it takes its duty to extirpate the cancer of extremism from within its own body of believers, while ”moderate” Muslims do nothing about their own much bigger problem?

viiiAs a student of ancient history, I have to acknowledge that “slavery,” broadly construed, has been ubiquitous throughout history, likely since before the dawn of agriculture and the first cities. Explaining something however, is not the same as excusing it. In Rome (both the Republic and the Empire), slaves were often the only member of a household that could read and write, earn their own money, and even buy their own freedom. In fact, a freed Roman slave, while not considered a Roman citizen, entitled to what we today would call “due process,” the children of a freed Roman slave were considered citizens. As any Christian ought to know—and shame on any that do not know—being able to assert one’s rights as a citizen of Rome came in awfully handy to the Apostle Paul.

In the brutal, inhumane, chattel slavery in the United States that was ended only after the Civil War and the passage of the 13^th Amendment to the Constitution, it was forbidden to teach slaves to read or write, nor was there any way for a slave to earn money and buy their own freedom.

What We Have Wrought

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Wed, 9 Nov 2016 20:57:00 -0800

Disclaimer:

Right up front, I need to acknowledge that some reading this will take exception, or even offense, by what I have to say. But really, I am okay with that, because I trust that anyone reading this (as if anyone would give a damn what I think) will understand the difference between having (or starting) an argument, and making (or constructing) an argument. Any idiot—including me—can do the former. The latter though, requires the marshaling of facts and evidence, thinking through the logic and reasoning, and identifying the weaknesses of their position—hopefully before the other party does, and modifying the whole package as necessary to correct those weaknesses.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s roll.

***********

Well, it happened. The nation that had the audacity to attempt to leave human footprints in the lunar regolith—“...in peace for all mankind.”—and eventually left 12 such sets; that valiantly stood with Great Britain, France, and Stalin's Russia (proof of the brute fact that sometimes we actually do have to choose between the lesser of two evils) to free Europe and the rest of the world from the tyranny of fascist Nazi Germany and its allies; that almost single-handedly saw to it that a devastated and starving Europe and Japan rebuilt once the threat of the Axis powers was utterly broken; that stood as a bulwark against Communist Russia and a beacon of hope to the world; whose founding documents, like no others before or since, called to the highest and noblest aspirations of our shared human natures, has elected the amoral patsy of some of the darkest, most vile elements and channelers of humanity's innermost demons, Donald J. Drumpf.

My opening salvo in this was, to be honest, subtle and mild. I had been sporting a closely trimmed beard for the last year or two, so when getting ready for work this morning, I turned my beard into a goatee. The small number of my co-workers that are intelligent and sufficiently enlightened to get the Star Trek reference are probably no less catatonic than I am as the die Götterdämmerung of the United States unfolds before our eyes. The rest of them lack the intellectual and moral wit to get the message.

To this already overflowing cup of bitterness, there is the additional bit of trivia that I am a 20-year veteran of the United States’ military and my day job is that of a Veterans Employment Specialist, and tomorrow, I have to go to a homeless veterans “stand-down” sponsored by the Veterans Administration (VA). Throughout the day, I am certain of hearing the hackneyed phrase “thank you for your service,” and I am not sure how I will react. And I sure as hell will not be thanking any other veterans for their service, because what the 59,611,678 of our fellow citizens that voted for Donald Drumpf have done, for just one example, is to have collectively pissed on the graves of every single service member that fought for the United States and our allies and gave their lives to break the grip of fascist Nazi Germany on Europe, and are now buried in cemeteries from Normandy to Berlin.

This is where the gloves come off. Part of Drumpf’s sales pitch to his clueless acolytes was that he shared their disdain for “political correctness,” and they are brave enough to speak what they think is “their own mind,” and even stoop to violence, at least when in groups. However, as isolated individuals, many lack the courage of their basest, most pathetic, most xenophobic convictions—but they will go into a voting booth and cast a ballot for a candidate that would kick a member of their own family to the curb, deny them needed medical care, or the resources to provide their children with adequate nutrition—but utterly lack the guts to say as much to the affected person’s face.

I do not propose that anyone be deprived of their rights or civil liberties as I have no desire to become what I loathe. What I do propose, nay, what I will do, until my dying day, is to personally hold those around me to the absolutely highest moral and ethical standards. The thing is, every day of our lives, we all (with some exceptions) have to rely on the goodwill of those around us, and we all derive an absolutely indispensable social utility from others thinking us to be, as trite as it may sound, generally decent human beings, unlikely to stab others in the back. I do not wish to interrogate anyone regarding their voting habits or ideological dispositions, but when such dispositions are discernible through everyday interactions with them, I assert, and will exercise, my absolute, unassailable right to treat that as a data point in what is, self-evidentially, the legitimate need to make a determination of the content of the character of those around me.

In a future post/essay, I will explain what I mean by "the highest moral and ethical standards" and just how my personal moral compass was calibrated and how it is relevant.

South Dakota is now better than Mars?

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Tue, 21 Apr 2015 19:01:00 -0700

My home state, the state of South Dakota, will be kicking off a new, well-intentioned media campaign to dispel the popular image that South Dakota is a desolate no-man’s land devoid of cultural and/or recreational activities. The television/internet spots open with the narration:

"Mars…the air: not breathable. The surface: cold and barren. But thousands are lining up for a chance to go and never come back."

Not too bad…yet. After the obligatory postcard pictures of the state, the narration continues with a tagline that is supposed to take advantage of the trending topic of the exploration and colonization of Mars:

"South Dakota. Progressive. Productive. And abundant in oxygen. Why die on Mars when you can live in South Dakota?"

The advertisement closes with the words:

"South Dakota. Plenty of jobs. Plenty of air."

Well, you know what they say about where using good intentions as paving stones leads…

As a South Dakota native and a passionate, principled advocate for reason, science, and humanity's ongoing efforts to understand and explore the cosmos of which we are but a small part, I am galled, disappointed, but sadly, not terribly surprised by the stupefying chain of metacognitive failures that led to anyone thinking that this was a good idea for a media campaign. Just several weeks ago I was incredibly jazzed when I learned that Neil deGrasse Tyson was slated to speak in Rapid City this coming October. Now I just hope he does not cancel after this eloquent demonstration of just how small-minded, benighted, and provincial the majority of this state is.

I live in South Dakota, and I would rather be on my way to Mars with that first batch of colonists than stuck here–at least intelligent conversation would not be so hard to come by. Let's see...which is greater, the average IQ of the first bunch of Mars colonists or that of the combined averages of the typical crowd at a Rush hockey game and that of the state officials in Pierre who thought this campaign was hip, clever, or witty?

I was recently watching one of the programs from the annual World Science Festival in New York City on the subject of exoplanets. At about 24:45 into the public talk, one of the scientists on the panel asked the audience if they would go to a potentially Earth-like planet around the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, a paltry 4.2 light years away, even if it were a 40 year, one-way trip. There were quite a few hands raised. This is exactly the kind of forward-thinking, intelligent, adventurous, and courageous people any state or nation should try to attract, the problem is, intelligence is also highly correlated with being able to spot the sort of irony that obliterates irony meters.

I knew a kid growing up whose surname was a five-letter euphemism for an erect phallus and his parents were so clueless that they named this poor kid Harold! When my (now ex-) wife and I were looking for names for our kids, we deliberately went through every possible mean, petty, cruel, and vicious permutation and combination we could think of…before playground bullies had a chance to. We had enough presence of mind to consider how our choice might conceivably backfire, and though we could never be certain we would be successful, at least we tried!

South Dakota officials have been rightly concerned about the exodus of graduates from the state's colleges and universities for greener pastures elsewhere, many before the ink on their diplomas has even had a chance to dry. As a graduate of the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology (SDSM&T), I fail to see how such an ad campaign would attract bright, optimistic physics and engineering students, the sort that dream of the stars, to pursue their college education, let alone stay to teach or conduct research, in fields that will eventually take humanity to Mars and beyond, in South Dakota. Ever hear of the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium? Well, if this media campaign is successful, such endeavors, at least in South Dakota, may themselves run out of life-support…soon.

Lest I am accused of not offering constructive criticism, I would like to offer the following, minor tweaks to the ad campaign’s verbiage:

"Mars…the air: not breathable. The surface: cold and barren. But thousands are lining up for a chance to go and never come back."

"South Dakota. Progressive. Productive. And abundant in oxygen. If you want a life of Adventure, Challenge, and Opportunity, why go to Mars when you can live in South Dakota?"

"South Dakota. Plenty of jobs. Plenty to Explore. Plenty of air."

In all modesty, it does not take a rocket scientist, which I’m not, to improve on drivel.

Merely “Leisure” Activities?

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Tue, 9 Dec 2014 18:47:00 -0800

I am often surprised by the stuff I know that others seem totally ignorant of. It is not as though I deliberately set out to stuff my head with trivia to impress people around me, or, as I have more than once been accused of, make them feel stupid. Even when not suspected of being deliberately uncharitable in my opinions of my fellows, others feel obliged to remind me that not everyone is “interested” in the same things I am, and usually revolve around doing something useful with a computer.

We all have the right to allocate such resources as we can afford–in terms of time, money, and energy–to the leisure activities of our own choosing or inclination–provided they are legal, of course. In developed countries, at least for those not mired in poverty (generational or otherwise) or burdened by a cognitive disability, there are a wide range of leisure pursuits available to them. Those that whine about being “bored” or that there is nothing that “interests” them immediately to hand, it bears pointing out that it is those with boring, unimaginative minds that are often the most easily bored; in short they are not trying hard enough.

A few weeks ago I was talking to a co-worker that recently purchased a Windows 8 computer and they complained about the absence of the familiar “Start” menu. I empathized, telling him that when I was shopping for a new laptop shortly after Win 8 debuted it took me all of 10 minutes on Google to find a workaround so I could get back to a Win 7-type desktop, which I too preferred. He responded (I’m paraphrasing), “Well, you just 'get' stuff like that.” I tried to point out that it is the exact same skill set one used to look up information on a particular topic using the index in a book or using an old-fashioned library card catalog, but his reaction gave me the distinct impression that wrapping his head around what I had said would have required more thought than he cared to, or could be bothered to, invest. Much of this tension arises from the idea, wide-spread in our modern culture, that having to figure something out, to think, or to use the ability to reason in order to reach a goal is somehow optional in the same way that knowing how to crochet is optional.

In our 21^st-century society, some have gotten it into their heads that expecting supposedly competent adults, at least occasionally, to step outside their pathetic little comfort zones and exert themselves mentally, cognitively, or intellectually so they can get to wherever it is they want to go, or accomplish, in life is somehow a form of bullying. Such a position could not be more wrong, or more dangerous. As an adult with a clinical diagnosisⁱ of ADD, staying organized, focused, and on-task is something that in no way, shape, or form comes naturally to me. Given my diagnosis, according to experts that assist those with disabilities in finding and keeping a job, I should avoid desk-bound jobs that require good time-management, record-keeping, and organizational skills. The problem is, that is exactly the job I have. Every day I have to discipline myself to do things that do not come naturally to me or that were once outside my personal comfort zone, like keeping good case notes on my clients and staying on top of my schedule. At this point, a reader might be forgiven for thinking I am a really arrogant bastard; however, they may be surprised to learn that I hate to say “no” when someone asks for my help with something, even when it means dropping what I'm doing. It has been a struggle learning to “no” when working on something that cannot easily set aside and pick up again later.

Homo sapiens (modern humans), and the plants and animals we raise for food, have become the dominant terrestrial form of life (excluding insect-sized critters and smaller) on the planet. The reason for this is (or ought to be) obvious; our ability to reshape the environment around us. In modern, developed societies, the environment is dominated not by the climate, or the local geography, but the culture(s) in which we live. Our brains, and their associated wiring, largely determine what our natural inclinations are and this powerfully influences what hobbies, interests, and leisure activities we choose from among what is available in the culture(s) in which we are embedded. Among the consequences of this interplay of genes and culture are the friends we choose, what we choose to talk about, the music we listen to, the books we read (or don't read), the movies and television shows we watch, the foods we come to enjoy, and a great many other things.

This bi-directional interaction of our genes and the environments we tend to gravitate towards (due to our genetic predispositions), when played out over the human lifetime can, and does, have profound effects on intellectual development. In the lead up to the October 2012 annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, the 5 October issue of the journal Science was devoted to highlighting 'Mysteries of the Brain.' In that issue, a news article titled ‘Why Are You and Your Brain Unique?' looked at, among other things, what we do and do not know about intelligence. The scientific consensus is that in young children, roughly 20% of the variation in intelligence is due to heredity (this is where twin studies are particularly useful¹).^1
(p.693) Surprisingly, research studies involving older adults have found that the heritability of intelligence in that particular cohort can approach 80%.^{1
(p.695),2 (p.35)} One possible account of how the heritability of intelligence can go from 20% in young children to 80% in older adults is that what is heritable may not be raw computing power, but rather proclivities towards certain behaviors and tendencies to seek out certain environments.^{2
(p.35),3 (p.86–6)} In the Science piece cited above, behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin summed it up by asking, “Do you read books and talk to people who make you think more, or do you lobotomize yourself with television?”^2
(p.35)

While a ten-year old's preference for spending a rainy day exploring their local public library as opposed to sequestering themselves in their room playing mindless video games may seem pretty trivial, over time such behavioral tendencies can exert a powerful influence on an individual's intellectual prowess. Plomin willingly concedes that testing that explanation experimentally may be difficult, but neither is it impossible.^2
(p.35) The takeaway here is that as children, the playing field‒in terms of any “edge” one might have courtesy of their genes‒is much more level than many have supposed. Flipping those percentages around, 80% of the variation in intelligence seen in children is not attributable to genetic hard-wiring but to environmental factors‒and that includes what leisure activities they choose to seek out, so in a sense, it is very much a question of use it or loose it. Personally, I have serious misgivings about the prospect of genetically engineering super-smart humans, and fortunately, for now, we do not know how to. I do not want to live on The Planet of the Morons either, so what can be done?

The influences of organisms' inherited traits when played out against the local environment is the essence of natural selection and this is just as true of our species as it is of all the other species on the planet. Perhaps the best example of a trait that is mostly genetic is height, the recipe for which, like intelligence, is made up of many different genes. Any human population, in a particular place and at a particular time, say white, adult males born in the United States between 1960 and 1969, will have an average height. A portion of the deviation from that average height (in either direction) of any one individual in that population will be due to the specific combination of genes they have inherited, and the remainder will be due to environmental factors, of which there are also many, and include things like an individual's medical history. The greatest impediment to reaching the maximum height allowed by an individual's genes is malnutrition prior to reaching sexual maturity. World-wide, the heritability of height is consistently observed to be between 65% to 80%. ⁴ The lesson is that if a population has its basic nutritional needs met, the average height of that population is not very environmentally malleable.

In contrast with height, the fact that only 20% of the variation in intelligence seen in children is heritable should mean that intelligence is far more susceptible to a society's efforts to maximize it by creating environments in which the intellectual development of children can flourish. The fact that by late adulthood the heritability of intelligence approaches 80% clearly shows the epic scope of our failure as a culture to avail ourselves of the robust malleability of intelligence seen in children.ⁱⁱ Instead, we have created a society and culture where people feel entitled to not have to think very hard, or well, about anything and become indignant when suffering the trauma of the cognitive equivalent of a hangnail or the need to apply a little mental elbow grease to accomplish a goal. We have convinced ourselves that it is an affront to “human dignity” to require of ourselves, and others, to think clearly, master a particular skill that does not have an obvious, immediate use, or present a cogent, evidence-based argument, or defend against such an argument made by another party.

It just so happens that a substantial portion of the leisure activities I find most rewarding and enjoyable are those that engage my seemingly endless curiosity, challenge me intellectually, and expand my understanding– and appreciation–of the universe we collectively inhabit and of our place within it. Having observed my fellow human beings over the course of my adult life, I can honestly say that a majority of them seem to avoid anything even remotely resembling the sort of things I enjoy like one might avoid an Ebola-ravaged African village–and I gladly concede that others' avoidance of such things is a right they are entitled to exercise. Though my teenaged self could not have predicted it, looking back over the intervening decades it is obvious that my interests, and hence the leisure activities I chose, have had the side effect of making me much better informed, better prepared, and more competent at navigating the increasingly complex and rapidly changing world of the 21st-century.

Reaching any goal worth achieving or realizing any meaningful growth as human beings is impossible without stepping outside our comfort zone; if where each of us wants to be always lay within our comfort zones then we would already be where we want to be. Pretending that anyone is entitled to not having to step outside their comfort zones, to never feel frustrated, to never have to struggle to learn something new or unfamiliar, or never face disquieting facts on the way to attaining their goals would be, quite simply, a lie‒or if one prefers, an act of bearing false witness.

The broader implications of bearing false witness in matters of the intellect, to ourselves and others, will be the subject of my next post.

References

1. Deary, I. J., Spinath, F. M. & Bates, T. C. ‘Genetics of Intelligence’. Eur. J. Hum. Genet.. 14, p.690–700; (2006).

2. Miller, G. ‘Why Are You and Your Brain Unique?’. Science. 338, p.35–36; (5 Oct. 2012). doi:10.1126/science.338.6103.35

3. Neisser, U. & Boodoo, G. ‘Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns’. Am. Psychol.. 51, p.77; (Feb. 1996).

4. Lai, C.-Q. ‘How Much of Human Height Is Genetic and How Much Is due to Nutrition?’. Sci. Am.. (11 Dec. 2006). at <http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-much-of-human-height/> accessed on: 19 Nov. 2014

i At least once a week I hear someone say something like “I am so ADD.” My response is to point out that unless they have been diagnosed my a licensed psychologist in a clinical setting, it doesn't count, and to describe themselves as having ADD or ADHD is to misrepresent themselves to others...period.

ii Imagine the outcry if, after children in a particular population were weaned (at the age of 3 to 5 years), the heritability of their height was observed to be only 20%, but after reaching sexual maturity, the heritability of height came in at 80%. Their individual genetic makeup remains the same, so we would be scrambling to identify, and remedy, whatever environmental factors were stunting the growth of so many children. Given that it is our cognitive faculties, far more so than our stature, that are essential to thriving in a modern, technological society, why is there not a similar outcry over the wasted potential of so many young minds?

Happy Thanksgiving, 2013

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 28 Nov 2013 13:18:00 -0800

Happy Thanksgiving to All!

Whatever our personal beliefs, no one is an island‒we all depend on the kindness, generosity, hard work, and sacrifices of our fellow human beings. If a neighbor foolishly fails to thoroughly read the directions on their new turkey fryer and sets fire to their house, but the fire is extinguished before it burns down their house (and possibly spreads to yours), and you feel a need to thank (insert preferred higher power), go ahead‒after all, reciting the right words in the right order demands very little us in the way of thought, reflection, or labor.

However, (you just knew this was coming) a far more sincere, tangible, and morally praiseworthy way of expressing one's heartfelt gratitude would be to do something for the firefighters and other first responders that gave up their holiday to protect the lives, safety, and property of their fellow human beings. Bring a meal to the station house, or ask if there are any that are without families nearby that would be alone and invite them to your house for the following holiday. If you have a loved one in a hospital or nursing home during the holidays, don't just say some words to them, actually do something for them. Pick up the phone and make some calls, get some names of those caring for your loved one during the holidays instead of spending time with their loved ones. Bake them some cookies, send them a fruit basket, or whatever, but do something.

Many ranchers here in South Dakota are still reeling from the effects of a devastating blizzard in early October and appeals for help in aiding ranchers that have, in some cases, lost well over half of their herds, has been phenomenal. Most (non-vegan) folks will be sitting down to turkey dinners rather than beef today, so remember those that are, this Thanksgiving Day, working to bring to fruition next year's harvest, often laboring for long hours in crappy weather, even on national and religious holidays.

So on this day of Thanksgiving, remembering that actions speak louder then words, do not neglect to say “Thank You” for those that labor, if even indirectly, on our behalf...because we can all agree that they do exist.

P.S.

Just for the record, I hate the word “Turkey Day” because, while I will be having some later this afternoon, I much prefer a holiday ham.

Just What Does the Far Right Not Understand?

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 10 Oct 2013 20:37:00 -0700

Well, here we are again, pawns in yet another game of “chicken” that puts the economic well-being of the United States of America at risk. The current situation is the result of many things, but I want to point out the complicity of my fellow citizens, because without their ignorance and intellectual laziness, we might not be in the mess we are in.

What galls me the most, is how many people do not know that the Affordable Care Act (ACA‒a.k.a. "ObamaCare"–a label that sounds like it was made up by a 7 y/o playground bully–which seems about right given the apparent cognitive capacities of the right-wing rank-and-file) is already a law! It was passed by both houses of Congress and signed into law on 23 March, 2010 by President Obama. It then withstood a challenge that went all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States (ScotUS)! Check it out yourself–there may be a quiz later. The coup de grâce of the whole thing is after all the wrangling, all the far-right rhetoric, all the "tea party" protests, and the legal challenges...the President that spearheaded the push for the law was re-elected in a campaign against an opponent who swore they would immediately repeal the law if elected!

Why is it that so many on the Right do not get that? Did they miss some episodes of Schoolhouse Rock!? The rights of citizens to share their opinions with others until they are blue in the face, which as a matter of principle, I would give my life to defend, in no way, shape, or form, means that the content of their opinion(s) is entitled to anyone’s respect, independent of the merits of said opinion(s). Students of all ages, from elementary school to grad students, are expected to turn in their assigned homework, but the teacher grades the work on its merits alone, and the same principle applies in the marketplace of ideas.

Citizenship in a democratic republic is serious business and if such a nation is to endure, it demands that its citizens do their homework before opening their mouths, pulling the lever, punching a chad, or blackening in a box!. The Framers knew that the only way our young republic would thrive was to have an educated, informed electorate. For the Framers, the bloody English Civil Wars of the 17^th century were recent history and they acknowledged that human nature had a darker side, where passions frequently trumped reason, which is why they designed our system of government with the system of checks and balances they did.

Early efforts to ensure the ideal of an “informed” electorate led to things like requirements that one be a white, land-owning male‒which, however well-intended such requirements were to begin with, they were soon used to systematically dis-enfranchise, by law, whole classes of citizens‒women and African-Americans in the Jim Crow South‒to name just two such groups. As a nation, our collective moral compass (at least for most of us) learned to reject such things as antithetical to the ideal of a participatory democracy. There are, however, steps we can, and must, take in our everyday interactions with others to minimize the damage caused by baloney, propaganda, and outright deception. We do not impose legal sanctions on people picking their nose in public, but we don't need them because the embarrassment people feel upon learning that others think them an uncouth, gross, disgusting boor for doing so is sufficient to quickly cure most people of the habit while still adolescents. Similarly, “civil discourse” does not mean giving someone spouting patently false nonsense a pass out of concern for their feelings, nor does it mean that we throw them in irons send them to a dungeon for being idiots. The “civil” in civil discourse hearkens back to the (albeit idealized by us today) age of the ancient Greek agora and the Roman forum, where citizens engaged in economic activities and discussed and debated matters affecting the polis, and its Latin equivalent, civitas‒what we would call today the citizen body.^1
(p.204)

As individuals and citizens, we must realize, and remind others when necessary, that in any discussion, debate, or outright argument, we must not only respect the rights of others to speak their mind, we must also defend our right not to have our time wasted. If our fellow citizens, elected officials, and media talking-heads demand that their right to be heard is respected, we, as the “audience,” have an equal right to demand of those laying claim to our time and attention that they do their homework and not insult and disrespect their audience by wasting their time.

Thomas Jefferson wanted his gravestone to note the three achievements of which he was most proud, The Declaration of Independence, the founding of the University of Virginia‒the first University in the former colonies intended, from the ground up, to have no religious affiliation, and his authorship of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. For this essay, the money quote is in the last paragraph of the Virginia Statute:

“...all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of Religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge or affect their civil capacities.^{2
(p.289–90)} (emphasis mine)

The point is, the right to publicly air ideas, beliefs, and opinions carries with it a duty to defend those ideas, beliefs, and opinions. If one's constitution (or intellect) isn't up to the task of defending their deeply-held beliefs using argument and reason, there are places where one can talk about them with little fear of criticism...like churches and NRA conventions. The trick is to not let one's beliefs write checks that their intellect can't cash and having the courage to keep ourselves, and others, honest.

References

1. Price, S. R. F. & Thonemann, P. The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine. (Viking: New York, N.Y, 2011).

2. Jefferson, T. The life and selected writings of Thomas Jefferson: Including the Autobiography, the Declaration of Independence & His Public and Private Letters. Ed by. Adrian Koch & William Peden. (Modern Library Paperback: New York, 2004).

Intellectual Honesty, Atheism, and Faith

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 20:55:00 -0700

I was recently asked two questions by a long-time family friend–who also happens to be an ordained Assembly of God minister. One was how an “intellectually honest” atheist could deny the “historical fact” of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth? The other was one atheists have heard (and answered) too many times before: “How is atheism not a faith too?”

Intellectual Honesty

There is nothing “intellectually honest,” at all, in asserting that any miraculous, supernatural phenomena is a “historical fact.” This is so obviously wrong–and on so many levels–that it was difficult to know where to begin. Here is a partial (and abbreviated) list of what is, and is not, intellectual honesty:

Intellectual honesty...

does not allow one to ignore evidence that goes against whatever it is that they want to be true (e.g. “So, Mr. President, what was it that made you think Saddam had all those WMDs in the first place?”)

is implacably opposed to compartmentalized thinking (the division of the Christian Bible into chapters and verses is a perfect way to encourage compartmentalized thinking and its handmaiden, hypocrisy)

requires that every link in a chain of reasoning must hold, without exception, no excuses, and no special pleading allowed

mandates that any attempt to sidestep, evade, or ignore these rules, by any party to a discussion, constitute sufficient grounds for forfeiture of any claim to be taken seriously

Doing My Homewor

As part of my homework, a word that appeared many times in my reply, I pointed out the contradictions in the narratives in the Synoptic Gospels (i.e. Matthew, Mark, and Luke) of the events leading up to the Crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth (JoN). I also put together a table of the discrepancies found in the Synoptic Gospels' accounts of the Resurrection.ⁱ Having been raised an evangelical/ fundamentalist Christian, I know my stuff when it comes to the Bible. As a teenager, I was intelligent and knowledgeable beyond my years and was in adult Sunday school/Bible-study classes throughout high school (some folks even thought I should go to seminary myself‒ironic, is it not?) and can run circles around every Bible-thumper I have ever met (I may have a lousy working memory thanks to my adult ADD/ADHD, but I have a very large, fast, and well-indexed hard drive).

Crucifixion by Contradictions

As I was fact-checking myself on the discrepant accounts of JoN's arrest and “trial” before the Jewish authorities and Pilate, I came across something I had never noticed myself, nor did I recall hearing or reading about it elsewhere before, that blew my irony meter to smithereens.

To be honest, my irony mater was already a bit strained by the whole concept of an “intellectually honest” acceptance of miracles as a “historical fact.” As I was reading the account of events leading up to the Crucifixion in the Gospel of Mark (14:55-59), my irony meter exploded when I came across it, and after reading it yourself, you may see why.

^“55The chief priests and the whole Sanhedrin were looking for evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death, but they did not find any. ⁵⁶Many testified falsely against him, but their statements did not agree. ⁵⁷Then some stood up and gave this false testimony against him: ⁵⁸“We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple made with human hands and in three days will build another, not made with hands.’” ⁵⁹Yet even then their testimony did not agree.” (emphasis mine)

Unless the author of Mark was from another planetⁱⁱ, even he thinks that contradictions and conflicts between the testimony of eyewitnesses–to the same events–ruins the credibility of those witnesses! The author is not named in the text itself, but has traditionally been identified with one Mark, a companion/interpreter of the apostle Peterⁱⁱⁱ, so for convenience, I will call him “Mark.” So anyway, Mark goes out of his way to make clear that, in essence, Jesus' accusers were idiots because they couldn't even keep their lies straight. This passage also indicates that Mark's audience had a positive expectation that testimony from honest eyewitnesses would agree.

The New Testament (NT) canon familiar to western Christians has not changed much since the Latin Vulgate was assembled by the beginning of the 5^th century C.E, and the whole time, there sat this little bombshell. The consensus among biblical scholars is that Mark represents the earliest surviving Gospel–with the authors of Matthew and Luke, the other Synoptic Gospels, borrowing heavily from Mark. In an additional twist of irony, apparently, Matthew and Luke, though they borrowed much from Mark, they appear to have missed Mark 14:55-59–if they had, they might have taken steps to ensure their stories agreed. Not only that, but what about all those copyists down through the centuries, did none of them ever notice the discrepancies and attempt to fix them? By the author of the Gospel of Mark's own logic, these much overlooked four verses impugn the credibility of the four Gospels themselves. This is known as someone being hoisted by their own petard (gratuitous Shakespeare reference–check). This is also a great example of special pleading–the blatant intellectual dishonesty of pointing to the discrepant testimony of the witnesses against Jesus of Nazareth as evidence that agents of Satan were out to foil God the Father's divine plan, then turn around and pretend not to notice that the same charge can legitimately be leveled against the veracity of the Gospels themselves.

Atheism a “Faith”?

Believers in the monotheistic religions make the positive claim that God exists and that their religion (whatever it may be) is the one “true” faith. Specifically, my friend believes (this is an assumption, but his phrasing of his question makes my assumption a reasonable one) that the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth is as much a “historical fact” as the Sack of Rome in the year 410 of the Common Era by the Visigoths, the Battle of Hastings in the year 1066 of the Common Era, which clinched the Norman Conquest of England, or the Moon landings. This claim rests upon a potentially limitless number of unstated‒and undemonstrated ‒major and minor premises, which include, but are not limited to, the existence of the God of Christian Scripture, which in turn, presupposes the existence of supernatural realms (and entities to inhabit them) not otherwise subject to natural laws. The evidentiary burden required to establish such fantastical claims is incredibly high.

All the evidence‒not just the cherry-picked bits Christians use to persuade the incurious and gullible masses, but also the evidence that reveals just how incredibly weak and thin the veneer of historical plausibility Christians have pasted onto their supernatural myths, little different from those of other cults of the Eastern Roman Empire in the first-century C.E. actually are‒have been thoroughly, skeptically, and intellectually honestly evaluated....and have been found wanting. The burden of proof is nowhere near being met, which justifies the rejection of whatever claims Christians might make as to the “historical fact” of the Resurrection, its unstated major and minor premises, and any claims it is, in turn, the basis of.

“Faith” is what gives parents license to refuse evidence-based medical care to their sick child‒and feel that their refusal is “holy”‒and have that feeling endorsed and supported by their fellow believers. My atheism, my non-belief, is not a “faith,” it is a verdict, a verdict arrived at after refusing to ignore what Christians blithely ignore, and by allowing my reason to follow my natural curiosity, and the evidence, beyond the mind-numbing echo chamber of religious “faith,” and by demanding the same standards of intellectual honesty we demand of our system of justice and in any other sphere of human intellectual endeavor.

I have yet to receive a reply from my friend...

iThe inspiration for my table, though I did all the reading, formatting, and general grunt-work myself, was inspired (no pun intended) by:

Ehrman, B. D. ‘Chapter 1: A Historical Assault on Faith’. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t Know About Them). p.8; (HarperOne: New York, 2009).

iiAt least on this planet, despite our cultural and linguistic differences, the emotions we feel and how we express them are, for the most part, universal. For instance, even if you do not speak French, the French metaphor “faux pas” will make sense when translated into one's native language. This is because our species, for the most part, shares a common inventory of emotions.

iiiSchröter, J. ‘The Gospel of Mark’. The Blackwell companion to the New Testament. Ed by. David Edward Aune. p.272–95; (Wiley-Blackwell: Chichester, U.K. ; Malden, MA, 2010).

eBooks and I

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sun, 15 Jul 2012 19:50:00 -0700

I love to read. I love books and the written word in general. One of the greatest pleasures of my life is to curl up on my couch or stretch out on my bed with a good book‒a real book, with a binding and pages made of paper‒no batteries required. I like having good books on my shelves, and when invited into someone else's home, the presence or absence of tangible, physical reading material, and when present, the subject(s) of the reading material can often, fairly or unfairly, inform my opinion of those whose home it is. I am not rich, or even well-off, by any measure, but I am proud of the depth and breadth of the works in my library of bound books.

As long as there are at least some people that like to collect things like stamps, baseball cards, music and motion pictures recorded on a physical medium (i.e. CDs and DVDs/Blu-rays), I suspect there will also be those that will enjoy, and continue to purchase physical, bound books. From a marketing standpoint, if book publishing went entirely digital, what would become of that staple of the publishing industry, the book tour? What gets readers to clear their calendars and brave the most inclement weather to attend a talk by a favorite author promoting their latest book? From the reader's standpoint, it is not so much the chance to hear the author speak, the biggest inducement is the chance for readers to interact with their favorite authors and ask them to sign their new book. In a world of Kindles, Nooks, etc., what would be the point? Will we hear readers say things like, “See this scuff mark on my Kindle^TM ? I got that when I downloaded James Patterson's latest ebook”? I think not.

Because I have such a deep appreciation for, and love of, the written word, it is not surprising that I consider the effort to express my own thoughts and ideas in the same way‒and do it well, hopefully improving with practice‒a very worthwhile endeavor. When I write about subjects that depend on getting one's facts right, I take great pains to research and document my sources (using Zotero‒a superb open-source bibliographic citation program). I readily admit it is sometimes a fair description of the diligence with which I dot my “i”'s and cross my “t”'s to say that it borders on the obsessive-compulsive. To the extent that I am a bit OCD about citing my sources, my defense is that I dread being caught with my pants down in an intellectual sense. Another defense is the daily frustration I feel when confronted by the fact that most people do not seem to give a hoot that they are talking out their asses about subjects of which they are utterly ignorant; I want to share as few traits with such people as humanly possible.

I have a tattered, well-used copy of the 27^th edition of the CRC Standard MathematicalTables that I acquired back in 1987 that was used at a Navy technical school I attended. The pages were falling out and were well-annotated by the students that came before me and it was being replaced with newer copies in better condition. That book went on to be further annotated by me and provide invaluable help not only to me as I studied calculus, physics, and electrical engineering on the way to earning my undergraduate degree, but to my daughters as they studied geometry, algebra, and trigonometry in high school.

Currently I have over 1.5 GB worth of scholarly peer-reviewed papers from on-line databases like EBSCO and ProQuest. I also make frequent use of Cornell University Library's outstanding arXiv repository of papers in the quantitative sciences. Additionally, being a dues-paying member of the AAAS, I also have online access to the journal Science and it's daughter publications. (My mother thinks it is a hoot that some of the mail I get from the AAAS is addressed to Dr. Northrup.) I also have a paid subscription to the online Questia library, a great source of books and journal articles in the humanities and social sciences. The vast majority of these papers are in the PDF format (with the exception of the material accessed through Questia) and are duly recorded in my Zotero library, both in the “cloud” and locally on my laptop. Using Zotero (I am not a paid spokes-person) I have the ability to copy/paste what I call “money quotes” from research papers of interest rather than going through the laborious process of re-typing them myself.

My current library of serious, non-fiction ebooks, in various formats, comes in at just under 20 GB. They include everything from things like the nine-volume Cambridge History of Christianity (relevant to a writing/research project I am currently working on) and science textbooks and references like an Introduction to Astronomy and Cosmology by Ian Morison. I was delighted to come across the ebook version of the 32^nd edition of the CRC Standard Mathematical Tables and Formulae, which I quickly snapped up for reasons of nostalgia. When researching whatever project I am working on, I have found being able to copy/paste passages from items in my ebook library into Zotero for later use as invaluable an aid as it is when quoting from a paper downloaded from the journal Science.

When I write, even for this blog, I always compose and polish my work using MS Word or LibreOffice and in the infrequent and brief snippets of down-time at my day job, I sometimes work on personal writing projects (don't tell my boss). I have a smaller, portable version of my library of downloaded research papers and ebooks, as well as various ebook reader software, on a flash drive for ready access, regardless of what computer I am at. Having read this far, it would probably be no surprise to learn that I have not paid for any of the ebooks in my library...until this weekend.

Earlier (on Saturday, July 14, 2012 to be precise), I came across a post by Jerry Coyne on his excellent blog, Why Evolution is True, the discussion of which I wished to contribute to. The post involved Sam Harris's latest book, Free Will, which I have not yet purchased or read, and because I like his writing, this seemed as good a time as any to plunge into the world of legitimate (i.e. DRM-restricted) ebooks. In the interest of full disclosure, the same day I also obtained a copy of Free Will (for free) via Bit Torrent, which is how I amassed the aforementioned 20 GB of ebooks. Many of the works of popular science, freethinking, atheism, and related topics in my ebook library I also have as printed and bound volumes. When a new book by authors whose work I follow (e.g. Dawkins, Harris, The Hitch (R.I.P.), Lawrence Krause, Dennett, Pinker, et al.) comes out I look forward to curling up with the physical book.

After checking out a number of ebook vendors online, I purchased the ebook Free Will through the online ebook store Kobo and found it a thoroughly disagreeable experience that I will not, as long as I have any choice in that matter, ever repeat. If I want to read a book for my own enlightenment and pleasure, I will continue to prefer old-fashioned bound books, and will gladly pay full price for them. Ebook readers like the Kindle, Nook, the iOS readers (don't even get me started on PC vs Mac‒at least for right now) are worthless to me, whether I am reading for pleasure or for research. When researching a topic for my writing, I often have my working draft and whatever ebooks are relevant to the subject at hand open at the same time, on the same computer. Further, ebooks that cannot be highlighted or otherwise annotated, and for which the copying of text (to insure I properly cite/quote particular passages) is disabled, are of no value to me whatsoever. To my mind, the various ebook reading platforms and file formats are simply a scheme to lock consumers into a particular type of hardware that are obsolete almost as soon as they hit the shelves and will need to replaced/upgraded in lockstep with Moore's Law. A nice racket...err...I mean "business model," I'm sure.

As a student, a frequent frustration was finding a research paper that, judging from the abstract, was exactly what I needed, but was only available behind a paywall set up by the likes of Elsevier, Springer, or Wiley. It seems I was not the only one that was outraged by this (see here, here, and here, just for starters). After my experience with DRM-protected ebooks this weekend, my opinion of the ebook publishing world is now almost as low as is my opinion of Elsevier and friends, nor are their motives for going about it as they are any less base, despicable, or contemptuous of those they hope to manipulate by such practices.

Citing Sources

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Mon, 7 May 2012 20:57:00 -0700

In my most recent post introducing my on-going series on the 2012 elections, I went on at some length about “doing one's homework.” I hold myself to that same standard‒with at least some consistency, I hope. A reader might have noticed that I cite my sources in many, if not most, of my posts and thought I should give a brief account of my thinking regarding citation styles. As an undergraduate I took upper-level classes from many different disciplines: physics, engineering, geology, biology, and political science...to name a few. The default citation format I cut my teeth on was the venerable Modern Language Association (MLA) style. This makes sense when one considers that most undergrad's are introduced to writing “scholarly” papers not within their own major, but in courses taught by faculty from the English department.

One of the things I like about the MLA style is that it is set up to handle a very wide range of sources, from peer-reviewed journals to on-line videos of scientific symposia and just about everything in-between. Like many students, I used a bibliographic citation software package, specifically, EndNote. However, EndNote is very expensive and I was delighted when I learned of Zotero, a free, open-source alternative to EndNote and its pricey competitors.

For a professor grading a stack of papers written by undergrads, the MLA style is nearly ideal because the in-text citations are obvious (or very "in-your-face," depending on one's mood) and are easy to reconcile with the list of “works cited” at the end of the paper. I get that. Though I am no longer a student, I still want to show that I have done my homework in what I write, but the very thing that makes MLA great for professors grading papers, the obviousness of the in-text citations, makes a MLA formatted paper hard to read if the writer actually wants someone that is not an English professor to read it because the effect is visually quite jarring.

After some playing around with the Citation Style Language (CSL) used by Zotero, I have found that I really like the in-text citation format used by the British journal Nature. It consists of a simple, unobtrusive, superscript within the text which corresponds to the entry in the references at the end of the paper. However, the Nature style is not set up to handle nearly the same diversity of sources that MLA is, so I have had to tweak it a bit to make it work. It is still very much a work in progress and so if a reader cannot easily place the citation style I use, now they know why.

2012-The Very Long Year-Introduction

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 18:40:00 -0700

Election years in the United States typically feel long, and 2012 is shaping up to be a very long election year. Indeed, one could even say it began as soon as the last polls closed on November 4^th, 2008. This post was originally intended to be a one-off, however, like so many other posts, as I wrote it, I was constantly saying to myself "If I cover this fact or concept here, I also need to mention that supporting (or contrasting) bit from over there"‒and the whole thing snowballed from there. The original impetus for the stand-alone piece was the blow-up over Rush Limbaugh's juvenile, schoolyard bully-style attacks on the character of Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke following her testimony before Democratic members of a House sub-committee. The subject of her testimony was contraception availability and the impact it has on women's reproductive health. Not surprisingly, as I noted above, instead of challenging the factual claims made in Ms. Fluke's testimony, something far beyond the pathetically limited scope of Limbaugh's intellect (not to mention that of his target demographic), the best he could do was resort to name-calling. The specifics of Ms. Fluke's testimony, Limbaugh's contemptible comments and those of his Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA)ⁱ sheep, will be covered in a later post.

In this post, I throw down the gauntlet and lay out my ground rules for any discussion or debate that purports to deal with the world around us. The gloves are off. I am through coddling social, religious, and political conservatives (and when I encounter people on the left that are equally ignorant, I will be just as intellectually brutal with them too). Let this be fair warning‒from now until I revert back to precisely the same the state of non-being I was in (suffering no discernible harm by the way) for the entire 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to just prior to my birth‒I will no longer remain silent when confronted by confident assertions made by people who have failed to do their homework. I always take considerable care in fact checking myself, in what I write and in my every day conversations with others. As a culture, we have little sympathy (for the most part) for a kid that blows off their homework in favor of playing video games and then embarrasses the hell out of themselves the next day in class when they try to bluff their way through a classroom discussion of the assigned material. Most grown-ups would consider such embarrassment their "just deserts" that would (hopefully) be a powerful motivator not to get caught with their intellectual pants around their ankles in the future, a valuable lesson in the journey toward maturity.

Paradoxically, upon reaching what can be loosely called "adulthood," the desire to avoid publicly embarrassing oneself or look like an ignoramus seems to undergo a curious inversion in some individuals. In the classrooms of our childhood and adolescence, those that pretended to know things they clearly did not were soon exposed, providing ample reasons to get our facts straight, have our ducks in a row, to dot our i's, cross our t's, and to do our homework. One would think that as adults, we would hold ourselves and others to a higher, not lower, standard of intellectual honesty than we hold children. As adults, we would certainly not want physicians that bluffed their way through medical school treating our loved ones or ourselves. Nor would we want auto mechanics working on our cars that were given passing marks for their ASE certifications and training merely because their instructors felt sorry for them. Lawyers that have not done their homework that dare appear in front of a judge are ruthlessly criticized and will have few clients and should we, as private citizens, ever find ourselves in a courtroom, whether civil or criminal, we have every right to demand that the attorney representing us has done their homework.

If our child were suffering from an unknown illness, we would demand that the treating physician leave no stone unturned or allow no assumption to go unquestioned in identifying the malady and how to treat it. In our daily lives however, when it comes to politics, social policy, etc., whether in conversations with family, friends, co-workers, or in the mass media, it is not the person that is, not to put a too fine a point on it, “talking out their ass” that is shamed and embarrassed, but rather it is the one that dares to call them on it that is vilified. By way of comparison, if you enter into a conversation with someone that has a mania for the minutiae of some subject or activity, whether it be Star Trek or NASCAR, they will soon know whether you are merely a dabbling dilettante or if you "know your stuff." If they determine that you are a mere pretender, few will hesitate to dismiss you as a "wannabe" or its equivalent.

As citizens in a democracy, one of our most consequential acts is going to the polls. The intellectual effort, the due diligence, the conscientiousness with which we educate ourselves concerning the facts of the issues before deciding who or what to vote for, are every bit as essential to the continued health of our representative democratic republic as the rigorous studies of a physician or surgeon are to the health of their patients. Paradoxically, our political discourse, at the level of individuals and in society as a whole, is rife with examples of people holding opinions that have no basis in actual facts. In the words of a 19^th century humoristⁱⁱ, "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so." In my office, there is an older co-worker that has one of those 8 ½ by 11 inch line drawings, like countless others in circulation in offices throughout the country when photocopying and fax machines were still a novelty. The picture depicts the face of an "old lady" holding a coffee mug, telling folks "Don't believe everything you think." I think that little "poster" should be placed outside every voting booth in the country. As Altemeyer observed in The Authoritarians², based on subject responses to other survey instruments, he was able to predict that certain people will reliably fail a simple test of inductive reasoning. What the results showed is that as long as those that actually failed the test thought the conclusion was true, they were utterly oblivious to the faulty reasoning used to arrive at the conclusion (or they thought it did not matter). This is why many mathematics teachers require their students to show their work and why some give partial credit‒because the point is to learn the complex steps involved in solving certain kinds of math problems. Once a student has the steps down, then they can concentrate on the silly mistakes we all make, like forgetting a negative sign or some such. The importance of being able make a logically consistent argument, and, not co-incidentally, know what a poorly constructed argument looks like, are a primary reason that Euclidean geometry is still taught in high schools. It may sound a bit lame or lacking in a certain "rigor," but a university I once attended even allowed students to take a course in formal logic to satisfy a core math requirement–because the goal was to teach logical thinking.

As a relatively uncontroversial (hopefully) example that illustrates the interplay between opinions and facts, and which I will later apply to more controversial ideas, is from the history of the Second World War. There have been those that maintain that Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) was in possession of what we would today call "actionable intelligence" of an impending attack on U.S. forces in the Pacific. In one sense, it did not require a genius to predict that the United States cutting off exports to a resource-poor and ruthlessly expansionist Japan would not go over well and that open conflict would be the likely result. Given that the principals involved are now dead, as a practical exercise it would hard to interrogate those that were in a position to know. Regardless of how "impractical" it may be to ascertain, 70 years after the fact, who in FDR's administration knew what, if anything, and when, or if, they knew it. The only thing that, even in principle, could ever possibly decide the matter would be evidence. How one feels about the New Deal, the Lend Lease program, FDR, any other aspect of the politics of the time, is irrelevant.

The most contentious and divisive topics in the areas of public policy arise largely because of differing ideas of the real purpose of laws and government institutions in a society. Right-Wing Authoritarians (RWAs) are able to get away with many of the things they do in setting public policy because, as individuals and as a group, their feet are seldom held to the fire and pressed for their true motivations for supporting the policies they do. When I say "holding their feet to the fire" I mean something like the climatic scene in A Few Good Men³, where Lt. Kaffee relentlessly presses the self-righteous Col. Jessup until he tells the truth‒that he ordered the "Code Red," convinced the whole while that he had done nothing wrong.

The idea of "doing one's homework" when forming our beliefs and opinions is part of the more general (and very rare) virtue of intellectual honesty. Intellectual honesty not only requires that we be willing to defend our opinions and beliefs, but that we are also obliged to honestly acknowledge the motivations and assumptions underlying them. It seems that on some level, RWAs seem to instinctively know that to come right out and say the actual reasons why they take the positions they do regarding certain subjects will expose them to public ridicule. Aside from the ravings of anti-vaccination nut-jobs, most folks, RWA's included, recognize that promoting public health through vaccination programs, fluoridation of water, etc., is a legitimate area of concern for governments‒until the public health concern in question has any connection, however tenuous or remote, to sex. In developed, liberal democracies throughout the world, it is generally acknowledged that unwanted teenage pregnancies and the unchecked spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) have significant economic, social, and public health costs and are no less a legitimate public health concern than preventing flu pandemics. There would be near-universal outrage if a government were to mandate the use of a particular treatment for a specific disease for any other reason than that it actually works.

If a society, or a government that claims to act in the name of its citizens, is serious about reducing the human suffering, misery, and deaths caused by smallpox, the only legitimate criteria is: do the vaccines in question actually work as advertised? If anyone were to propose an alternative, we would require that the alternative is more effective, period. Before spending tax dollars on an ad campaign to educate consumers to properly handle and cook meat in an effort to reduce food-borne illnesses, we would demand that the precautions advocated are actually effective. Proposed solutions to societal ills that seem to have little to do with whether or not the solutions in question are actually effective in fixing or mitigating the problem, should set off all sorts of alarms in the minds of all intelligent, thoughtful, and honest human beings. In my next essay, I will expose the moral pretensions of RWAs by looking at one of the hot button issues of the upcoming election

ⁱDr. Robert Altemeyer has been researching the authoritarian personality since the mid-1960's. When the horrors of Hitler's "Final Solution" started to dawn on the rest of humanity, many sought to understand how people‒otherwise decent, normal, educated folks‒can so totally surrender themselves to a charismatic leader with a brutal ideology. Novelists like George Orwell and Kurt Vonnegut explored these questions through their fiction. While some “social scientists” indulged in various forms of moral relativism (I will spare the reader a rant against “post modernism”) other social scientists felt it essential to understand what combination of individual and societal factors make it possible for the citizens in a modern nation, solidly a part of the "Western Tradition," to go along with the Holocaust, indifferent to the enormity of what was done.

Serious social scientists like Phillip Zimbardo (The Stanford Prison Experiment) and Stanley Milgram (The Milgram Experiment) explored situations and contexts in which people surrender to “authorities” and can be goaded to commit moral atrocities they would not if left to their own volition. Altemeyer 's contribution was in identifying two distinctive types of “authoritarian” personalities. Obviously there were “Authoritarian leaders,” e.g. Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco (Spain)‒they are easy to spot. All by themselves they are merely a frustrated demagogue, to be dangerous, they need followers‒lots of them. This was why much of the research into the "authoritarian personality" following the Second World War focused on authoritarian followers.

In Altemeyer's research, he defines "Right-Wing Authoritarians" to be (in part) those that submit to established authorities and rigidly adhere to conventional ways. "Left-Wing Authoritarians" would be those that submit to those that would overthrow the established, traditional authorities‒think 1960's hippie radicals‒a rare breed in the United States today. Keep in mind that while on the conventional "left-right" political spectrum, Soviet or Chinese-style Communism (note the capitalization‒when you see it I wish to make a distinction between socialism/communism and a specific instantiation of it the same way that we would describe the United States as being a democratic republic) is deemed to be the far left end of the spectrum, but for someone living under such a system, that Communism is the established authority. A zealous supporter of conventional ways and the "party line," whether in the United States or in Soviet Russia, would be a Right-Wing Authoritarian (RWA) follower.

ⁱⁱAmong late 19th century American humorists, Mark Twain (1835-1910) is the most famous. However, on the quotation sites I consulted, no instances attributing the quote to Twain provided a title of the containing work. Geoff Colvin in this book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else, quotes a contemporary of Twain's, Josh Billings (his real name was Henry W. Shaw, 1818-1885) as: "It ain't so much the things we don't know that get us into trouble. It's the things we know that just ain't so." Elsewhere, Billings is quoted as (at: http://www.qotd.org/search/search.html?aid=3945&page=4): "It ain't what folks know that's the problem, it's what they know that ain't so."

The 1876 book, The Complete Works of Josh Billings, p. 286 contains the following quote: "I honestly beleave it iz better tew know nothing than two know what ain't so."[sic] The careful citing of sources seen today was not all that common in the 19^th century‒except perhaps in scientific circles. Attempts to correct the "loose" spelling (by modern standards, not for the times it was composed) of Billings' phrasing neatly accounts for the many variations in phrasing of the sentiment expressed as later writers “cleaned up” Billings' very astute observation to make it less jarring to more modern readers.

References

1. Colvin, G. Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else. (Penguin: 2010).

2. Altemeyer, B. The Authoritarians. (2006). at <http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/>

3. Reiner, R. A Few Good Men. Film. (1992).

An Epiphany or Just Kidding Myself?

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sat, 3 Dec 2011 01:03:00 -0800

I just got home (late on Dec. 2) from a five-day conference of Veteran's Employment Representatives on the new materials for the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) for service members about to leave the military and I wanted to get my thoughts out there with little polishing. The conference, my "classmates," and especially the "trainer," Dr. Beverly Hyman were the best part of the experience. Dr. Hyman and her husband are the co-authors of the book, How to Know If It's Time to Go: A 10-Step Reality Test for Your Marriage–which I will be buying and reading–and I have been divorced almost ten years now.

I have written before of my ADD/ADHD and anyone that knows me would not be surprised that I was that annoying student that was always raising their hand to contribute something to the discussion. There were times I had to force myself to remain still and let others have a chance. It is not (I hope) that I am really that self-absorbed, it is just that, despite my ADD/ADHD, or (here comes the possible epiphany part) because of it, I seem to have a knack for finding connections, metaphors, or analogies between seemingly dissimilar ideas or concepts. One of the diagnostic features of ADD/ADHD is a deficit in "working memory" and that is me to a "T." Might it be that my deficit in working memory forces me, and perhaps others with ADD/ADHD, to draw on their long term memories, or to use a computer metaphor, to compensate for not having enough RAM (where programs and data are stored while they are being used, and which is cleared when the computer is powered down) by having a fast and very well indexed "hard drive" (long term memory) that is able to make rapid connections to things it already knows?

Jet fighters are designed in such a way that, aerodynamically, they are just on the verge of being uncontrollable. Key to the survival of military jets in air-to-air combat is their maneuverability, whereas predictability and stability are what you want in a commercial or military that carries people or other cargo. Perhaps those with a good working memory are able to stay focused and "on task," like a well-designed passenger aircraft. Combat aircraft on the other hand are too difficult for a human to control and it is only the ability of computers to make tiny millisecond by millisecond adjustments to the flight controls that they are stable at all, but when they do need to maneuver, they can do so incredibly quickly-in much the same way that someone with ADD/ADHD can quickly see how a new piece of information might relate to something they already know.

I have some thinking and reading to do. I will certainly have more to say later.

A Memo to J.J. Abrams

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sat, 5 Nov 2011 22:50:00 -0700

Picking science fiction movies apart for their scientific gaffes–both major and minor–has a long and venerable tradition. When I first saw J.J. Abrams' Star Trek "reboot" in the theater (twice) I enjoyed it immensely. However, the weaknesses of the whole idea of a "supernova" taking out a single habitable planet, the home-world of the movie's villain, was not lost on me at the time (I will not address the "red matter" MacGuffin in detail here). While watching it again the other day on DVD, I thought of a minor tweak that would make the plot element of the destruction of a planet more scientifically plausible and still retain the following storyline benefits:

the plot would still involve a black hole (cue ominous music)
the word “supernova” (hereafter: “SN”) would still be used on-screen
the word “hypernova” (i.e. a really bad-ass big brother to a mere supernova) could be used as well
an opportunity would be created for some really awesome, not yet depicted on the big screen, FX "disaster porn"

So, beginning at the beginning...

Throughout their lives, all the stars we can see on a clear night (and even those we cannot) exist in a state of equilibrium between the outward force of the energy released by the fusion of lighter elements into heavier ones in the star's core, and gravity, which acts to collapse the matter of the star to a central point. When a star is being born from a molecular cloud, as it condenses, the pressure and temperature at its core increases steadily until at about 15 million K,ⁱ thermonuclear fusion begins. Once the fusion process has begun, the the outward radiation pressure of the energy thus released begins pushing back against gravity, settling into a state of what is called hydrostatic equilibrium and there matters stay, at least as long as there is enough of the "fuel" needed to keep fusion going and pushing back against gravity. In the case of our own Sun, it is just barely middle-aged for a star of its size and luminosity and will go on largely as it is today for another 5 billion years.

All good things must come to an end and so it is too with the fusion gravy train. The problem is that a star's supply of elements that can be fused is not infinite. As lighter elements are fused into heavier elements, those heavier products make their way to the star's core, but that is where the highest temperatures and pressures, necessary for fusion, are also. The kind of fireworks called for by the movie going public in their lust for great science fiction disaster porn needs a star (or stars) many tens of tens of times the mass of our sun.

The scale of the disaster porn I'm referring to can only come from the most energetic cosmic phenomena observed by humans, the only thing more powerful yet conceived by science is the Big Bang. These cosmic phenomena are called gamma-ray bursts (GRB's). Gamma-rays are the most energetic, highest frequency form of electromagnetic radiation. To provide a tangible sense of the energy of gamma-rays, anyone who has ever had x-rays taken has likely worn one of those heavy, lead-lined "bibs" to shield the more delicate parts of our bodies (e.g. the reproductive organs). Gamma-rays can penetrate up to several centimeters of lead, over ten times the thickness of lead used to shield patients getting x-rays.

Some (though not all) observations of GRBs are associated with supernovae (the plural form of the singular “supernova”). All by themselves, supernovae are powerful enough (in the visible light part of the spectrum) that for decades, astronomers have used a particular species of supernovae, designated by astronomers as a "Type Ia" supernovae, as part of the "cosmic distance ladder." The circumstances under which they form make them a "standard candle"ⁱⁱ that can briefly outshine the galaxy of which they are a part. Conventional supernovae release these incredible amounts energy in a blast that is a more-or-less spherical wave front of high-speed particles, visible light, and hard radiation, fading over a period of days or even weeks. What makes GRBs different is that they release at least as much energy as supernovae, but do so in seconds, and in two focused directional "beams" thought to be aligned along the magnetic poles of a freshly-minted black hole.

(Any real astrophysicists reading this, please be kind in the hate mail I'm sure you will want to send after what I say next.) As a strictly visual metaphor (the physics behind it, other than the magnetic field connection, is quite distinct) think about the auroras visible from Earth's extreme north and south latitudes, the point being that "stuff" can interact with magnetic fields. Another similar cosmic phenomenon are "pulsars," thought to be (on very solid observational grounds, mind you) rapidly rotating neutron stars (i.e. failed black holes) whose magnetic poles are offset from their rotational poles, creating a "lighthouse" effect, both in the radio and the visible light spectrum, and are detectable for many light-years. In fact, their signals are so precisely timed, when first detected by radio telescopes in the 1960's they were referred to as, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, LGM's for "little green men" as there as there was no known natural phenomena that were that regular.ⁱⁱⁱ

There are several, and not necessarily mutually-exclusive, posited "progenitors" for GRBs,¹ but there is much that is still unknown–leaving a lot of room for science-fictional speculations. Without going into too much detail (a temptation I frequently face) there are short and long-lived (remember, time is relative) GRBs. The so-called "long" GRBs (those lasting more than 2 seconds), have always been observed in connection with supernovae, specifically, a kind of supernovae called collapsars. Collapsars are supernovae whose progenitors are stars of 40+ solar masses, massive enough to have developed a solid iron core, ^iv that collapses straight (well, almost) into a rapidly-rotating black hole without pausing at the neutron-star phase. Short GRB's–those lasting less than 2 seconds, and commonly only fractions of a second-making them hard to detect as one has to be looking at it as it happens to catch it–are thought to result from the merger of a black hole with a neutron star, or of two neutron stars.

If I were writing a script, I would use the black hole + neutron star plot device (you could still have the "red matter") as some sort of "ultimate weapon" gone cosmically awry. You could even use the old science-fiction trope of the "Frankenstein complex"–either the hubris of the scientists involved thinking they can accurately predict and control where the beams will end up pointing, or the militaristic leaders who ignore the warnings of their scientists. The creators could also be some unknown threat from elsewhere (can you say "sequel"?). In the altered time-line of the reboot, presumably, the Borg (unarguably the baddest adversaries the Federation has ever faced) are still out there and the events of the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Regeneration" still happened. I'm seeing possibilities J.J.! Just think about the disaster porn FX you could get out of the massive jets from the GRB pulverizing star systems as it bores a path of interstellar destruction through the galaxy!

I am too young (at 47, I seldom get to say that much anymore) to remember the original Star Trek (ST:TOS) during its first-run on NBC. Somewhat against type, I was drawn to science fiction by my interest in, and love of, science–and especially astronomy–while it seems that many scientists of my generation were first turned on to science by a love of science fiction. A local TV station started showing reruns of ST:TOS in my first year in junior high, and perhaps not coincidentally, the same year Star Wars: A New Hope was in theaters. Add to this the presence in my school library of the James Blish short-story adaptations of all 79 episodes of ST:TOS and the Alan Dean Foster novella-length adaptations of the animated series (ST:TAS) and you have a perfect trifecta. I was such a voracious reader (I still am) that I had read all of Blish's adaptations long before I saw all the ST:TOS episodes.

As an adult science-geek, one of the things I enjoyed about Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG) was that the writers included bits of "sciencey" stuff that one could read about in recent issues of Scientific American, like "cosmic strings" or "dark matter," cutting-edge science stuff. What astronomy undergrad would turn down a chance to review the sciencey bits of a script (if done right, keeping the whole of the script a secret would not be that hard).

Heck, I'm available-and rather cheap, too!

¹ G. Vedrenne, Gamma-Ray Bursts: The Brightest Explosions in the Universe, Chapter 8, (Springer; In Association with Praxis, Berlin; New York; Chichester, UK, 2009).

iIn the Kelvin, or absolute temperature scale, water freezes at 273.15 , boils at 373.15, and all molecular/atomic motion ceases (that is one definition of "temperature") at 0 (zero) Kelvin (note the absence of the "⁰" degree sign). For a star the size and composition of our Sun, the core temperature (partly a function of its mass) is 15 million K.

iiIf a light source lies an unknown distance away, but you know that the source is a 100 watt light bulb, and you have a light meter, the kind used in old cameras, all you have to do measure the power of the light that reaches your meter, do a little math, and viola, you know how far away the light bulb is.

iiiSome pulsar signals are so stable (remember the accuracy claim of the first quartz watches?) make them suitable for use as cosmic “radio beacons” for interstellar navigation. The plaques carried by the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes as “greeting cards” to any advanced extraterrestrials that might come across it millions of years in the future illustrated the position of Earth with respect to 14 pulsars using a binary-type code.

ivThe creation of elements, via fusion, higher than iron on the periodic table require an input of energy rather than having energy left over to power the star and push back against gravity-which makes iron, as Isaac Asimov titled an essay on supernovae, the "dead-end middle."

The 48 Percent Part 3 - Slipping Into the Future

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:10:00 -0800

Right now, the United States economy, and that of the world in general, is in turmoil–arguably the worst economic disaster since 1929. In my day job, working on the public side the workforce development arena (i.e. Job Service), I see many people that feel strangely out-of-place seeking new employment in the 21^st century world, many of whom were with their former employer for decades.

Even my co-workers are not immune to this sense of bewilderment. The particular branch of my state government for whom I work is in the midst of transitioning, after nearly a decade using Windows XP^® and MS Office XP/2003, to Windows 7/Office 2010. In speaking with my managers and co-workers, I have likened the experience of my co-workers starting up their computers one morning, only to be faced with a completely unfamiliar operating system, to what a blind person would likely experience if they awoke one morning to find their furniture has been rearranged while they slept.

One of my younger co-workers observed, as have I, that many job-seekers that claim to know nothing about computers act as though their ignorance is something of which they can be proud. I am quite willing to grant a pass to those of my parent’s generation (born 1939), those that are at or near retirement age. However, for those young enough to have not yet started elementary school when Sputnik 1 launched in 1957 (i.e. those born after, say 1952/3), there is, barring some notable exceptions that I will address shortly, no excuse.

My day-to-day supervisor thinks that with the rate computer technology is advancing, it will not be long before computers will be completely voice-activated, without the need for keyboards or pointing devices (mice, trackballs, etc.), with perhaps the exception of a finger. The sort of computer-human interaction depicted in Steven Spielberg’s film The Minority Report may not be far off the mark in this regard. History has shown however, that while the pace of technological change is in some regards even quicker than some “futurists” predicted, reliably predicting the direction of the changes is more of an art than a science. Case in point: from the vantage point of the 1950’s through the mid 1970’s, the real 21^st century does not look much like the 21^st most thought it would just several decades ago.

While the changes that have occurred have not been in the anticipated directions, they are every bit as momentous, if not more so, than the long-delayed flying cars in everyone’s garage, orbiting space colonies, and manned Mars bases. Just because we do not yet have flying cars for all, and are still waiting on the lunar vacation resorts, does not mean that the computer revolution of the last 15-20 years was a mere passing fad, as some plainly thought it was. Apparently, a significant number of our fellow citizens (I am almost exclusively concerned with Americans in this piece) were not paying attention.

Another thing that leaves me stupefied is when people act outraged or offended when pointing out that their lack of computer skills will preclude their opening certain occupational doors, as though it is completely unreasonable to expect them to put forth the required effort to acquire new skills in order to make themselves marketable to employers. I am not talking about “average” people knowing how to create their own webpage using html code, or build a relational database from scratch. What I am talking about is “average” folks being able to follow the instructions for filling out an online employment application or finding information about a potential employer by visiting their website.

It is now time for a few caveats and to crank down the “arrogant bastard” tone. Many people (I am referring to adults throughout) find computers intimidating. One oft-repeated frustration I have heard is that some find computer screens too busy; with just too many things to visually track. This produces stress and anxiety, which in turn makes it that much harder to focus and just becomes a debilitating positive feedback loop. Our technological society has created a stimulation-rich environment that did not exist 50+ years ago.

One result of our stimulation and information-rich society has been a marked increase in the identification of, and diagnoses for, cognitive impairments like ADD/ADHD and autism. One mundane reason for this increase is that the diagnostic tools used to detect such impairments have become much more refined as our understanding of how the brain works has grown. The other reasons are best explicated by way of analogy. Brain circuits involved in spoken language were certainly shaped by our evolution, but written language (and formalized mathematics as well) are technological innovations, not things for which the human brain was equipped by natural selection.

There remain a few isolated hunter-gatherer societies in the world today, living much the same way that all of humanity lived prior to the invention of settled agriculture and the first cities. Even after the invention of farming and cities, several more thousand years elapsed before writing was invented. In such pre-literate societies, whether today or in depths of human pre-history, the condition known today as dyslexia was irrelevant in the environment in which such people lived. Additionally, to the extent that “dyslexia” was irrelevant, it would be reasonable to say that, in some sense, “dyslexia” did not exist.

A quote, most often attributed to William James, but first made known to this author via Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame, summarizes the situation nicely, “a difference which makes no difference is no difference.” If a difference in brain wiring, known to lead to dyslexia in an environment in which mass literacy was the norm, were to occur in the brain of a person belonging to a pre-literate society, that difference in brain wiring would, in fact, “make no difference” in the life of the individual in their native culture. It is only in an environment where mass literacy is the norm does such a distinction in brain wiring make an important difference.

People today find themselves bombarded by external stimuli (mostly visual and auditory) that were not part of the environment in which Homo sapiens evolved. Navigating the modern world calls upon cognitive abilities that were seldom, if ever, called on just a generation or two ago. Is it any surprise to anyone, especially experts in the cognitive sciences, that the totally novel sensory and cognitive environment of the early 21^st century is revealing heretofore unrecognized, and previously unneeded, strengths and weaknesses in the cognitive endowments of individuals.

One of the names this sort of “sensory overload” goes by is Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), but there are other conditions that exhibit similar symptoms. Much of the relevant peer-reviewed literature available to this author have titles such as:

Sensory processing disorder: Any of a nurse practitioner's business?[i]
The Concept of Information Overload: A Review of Literature from Organization Science, Accounting, Marketing, MIS, and Related Disciplines[ii]
"Is this Site Confusing or Interesting?" A Perceived Web site Complexity (PWC) Scale for Assessing Consumer Internet Interactivity[iii]
Employment and Adults with Asperger Syndrome[iv]
Information-processing deficits and cognitive dysfunction in panic disorder[v]
Perspectives on sensory processing disorder: a call for translational research[vi]
The Impact of Induced Stress Upon Selective Attention in Multiple Object Tracking[vii]

ADD/ADHD provides a useful analog for this in that it was first identified in children and only later was it realized that the condition persists into adulthood. Many adults, myself included, developed coping strategies and were completely unaware the ADD/ADHD they had as a child was still with them until they were properly tested. It may be that because children are often placed into environments and situations they would rather not be in, that it is in these situations that their struggles stick out like the proverbial sore thumb and provide a “handle” on which to begin a scientific enquiry. Adults, on the other hand, have traditionally had far more control over what situations and environments they choose to be in and after many years of doing so, the avoidance often becomes unconscious. With the majority of research in this area focused on children, I fear that many adults are slipping through the cracks. Adults who, for whatever reason, avoid anything that is too intellectually or cognitively challenging will be at a disadvantage, both in terms of self-sufficiency and providing good role models for their children.

I suspect that the apparent difficulties many adults have in functioning in our current stimulation and information-rich environments are an admixture of genetic/physiological[viii] factors, socioeconomic/cultural factors, and personal choices. Groping for remedies to this situation, without having the vaguest notion of how much of a particular population’s variation in demonstrated cognitive capacity is attributable to which causal factors, is a recipe for failure. Such a “wait it out” attitude essentially admits that some sizable faction of human beings is somehow incapable of being educated or elevated in their competency and understanding. So why not give up right now?

I do not wish to live in a world where a certain percentage of humanity is relegated to a permanent intellectual underclass–not if it can be helped. Putting my “arrogant bastard” hat on again, I also know that many people are, in fact, ignorant, incurious, and complacent. A frequent frustration in my day job is that I am in a bit of a catch 22 in distinguishing those that have a legitimate learning/cognitive disability from those that are merely lazy and/or complacent. Either way, I risk doing a grave disservice to those I work with daily. I do not tolerate fools gladly, and far too often, I must bite my tongue and refrain from telling someone who just could not be bothered to keep up with our changing world, that unless they have a note from their doctor, I am not going to carry their lazy ass.

[i] Byrne, Mary W. "Sensory processing disorder: Any of a nurse practitioner's business?" Journal of the American Academy of Nurse Practitioners 21. 6 (2009): 314-21.

[ii] Eppler, Martin, and Jeanne Mengis. "The Concept of Information Overload: A Review of Literature from Organization Science, Accounting, Marketing, MIS, and Related Disciplines." Information Society 20. 5 (2004): 325-44.

[iii] Gupta, Reetika, Sucheta Nadkarni, and Stephen J. Gould. ""Is this Site Confusing or Interesting?" A Perceived Web site Complexity (PWC) Scale for Assessing Consumer Internet Interactivity." Advances in Consumer Research 32. 1 (2005): 42-50.

[iv] Hurlbutt, Karen, and Lynne Chalmers. "Employment and Adults with Asperger Syndrome." Focus on Autism & Other Developmental Disabilities 19. 4 (2004): 215-22.

[v] Ludewig, Stephan, et al. "Information-processing deficits and cognitive dysfunction in panic disorder." Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience 30. 1 (2005): 37-43.

[vi] Miller Lj Fau - Nielsen, Darci M., et al. "Perspectives on sensory processing disorder: a call for translational research." Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience 3. 1662-5145 (Electronic) (2009).

[vii] Morelli, Frank, and Pamela A. Burton. "The Impact of Induced Stress Upon Selective Attention in Multiple Object Tracking." Military Psychology 21. 1 (2009): 81-97.

[viii] When I say “physiological,” I have in mind such things as the environment within the womb, nutrition, or any other biological effect that is not directly attributable to an individual’s genotype.

The 48 Percent Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Sat, 4 Sep 2010 22:53:00 -0700

At Beyond Belief 2006, when speaking about his work on phantom/paralyzed limbs and the denials that can accompany such phenomena, V.S. Ramachandran related a humorous anecdote about a study that asked people if they were above or below average in intelligence. Ramachandran pointed out the fact that like height, the distribution of IQ scores in a population take on the shape of the iconic “bell” curve (called by mathematicians a “normal” or “Gaussian” distribution). The salient property of Gaussian distributions of variations in a population is that 50% of the population will be below the average value (or arithmetic mean) for the trait in question and the other 50% of individuals in the population in question will be above the average value. [1] The punch line comes when Ramachandran reveals that 98% of the survey respondents indicated that they considered themselves to be of above average intelligence, a statistically impossible result which indicates that 48% of humanity are “in denial of their own stupidity.” His point was that even people without brain injury engage in classic Freudian, defensive denials every day.[2] Though the study may have been fictional, it is plain that only 50% of humanity can be of above average intelligence and therefore, the other 50% must fall below that average.

A consequence of the above dilemma showed up in an interview with Lord Martin Rees, Patricia Smith Churchland, A.C. Grayling conducted by Roger Bingham of The Science Network. At about 00:32:00 into the dialog, Dr. Churchland notes that there is (primarily in the United States), and coming from both the far left and the extreme right ends of the cultural/political spectrum, a disturbing undercurrent of anti-intellectualism in general, and of anti-science in particular. She confessed that she does not know how to reach the sort of people who get their news from Rush Limbaugh and/or a certain American news channel that she left unnamed.

The brute fact that half of humanity will always fall above the normalized “average” intelligence (measured by whatever criteria one chooses) and the other half will fall below that “average,” poses a profound problem for skeptics, atheists, scientific rationalists, humanists, and anyone hoping to increase the role of evidence-based critical thinking in the discourse of our democratic republic. Proposed solutions usually involve some combination of better schools and/or teachers, more educational television programs, more popularizations by capable scientists or other public intellectuals, more scientifically accurate Hollywood pictures, or better-trained science journalists. However, what if those things are only partial solutions? What if there is an asymptotic limit to the percentage of people that can be reached by reason and evidence? Amidst all the talk of science and math education in schools and efforts to engage the voting public, there is one question that has not been raised, let alone substantively addressed. What if some significant fraction of humanity is simply not cognitively equipped to think critically or rationally to the degree required to become a scientifically literate citizen in the 21st century?

No matter how “politically incorrect” the above question may seem, the question posed is very worth answering. Asking the question or attempts to answer it is not part of some sinister eugenics program or elitist, racist agenda. In Breaking the Spell, Daniel Dennett advocated that all the tools in the arsenal of modern science be applied to understanding religious faith and practice. Dennett also maintained that religious faith is unique in that it is currently off limits to the kind of inquiry he was proposing, hence his choice of title. While it is certainly true that the “taboo” against looking too closely at religious beliefs for fear of dulling their sheen is probably the strongest such taboo, inquiries into other areas of human existence can also set off alarms in some people. It is quite likely that what follows, if taken up by experts in the relevant disciplines (I make no claim to be one), may be an important adjunct to the investigation Dennett proposed. If the question under consideration were “what percentage of human beings can reasonably be expected, based on the heritability of the required traits and assuming an environment that provides the opportunity to excel, would be able perform at the level of an Olympic athlete?”, the question would be entirely uncontroversial. That is precisely the kind of question posed (but not answered) in this series of essays.

As Steven Pinker argued so effectively in The Blank Slate, human beings are not infinitely malleable. Relevant to the topic of these essays is the question of what exactly goes into making someone a skeptical, critical thinker (though not necessarily a scientist)? Obviously, “intelligence” or as it is colloquially called, IQ (after Intelligence Quotient)–an admittedly slippery term–is part of the picture, regardless of how “intelligence” is defined and/or measured. The openness and intellectual honesty demanded by rational inquiry, is essential to not only science, but to history, law, medicine, ethics, or any other field of human intellectual endeavor (not to mention the functioning of a healthy democracy), and is antithetical to any form of authoritarianism. The degree to which someone fits the authoritarian personality type certainly matters too. What is the nature/nurture split for authoritarianism? Likewise, curiosity and inquisitiveness are also essential to being an informed, rational citizen in the 21^st century. However, there are hundreds millions of human beings in the United States alone, never mind the rest of the planet, who seem incurious and uninquisitive. To what degree are curiosity and inquisitiveness malleable or heritable? What areas of the brain light up in when someone that is asked to justify their rationale for thinking that evolution or anthropogenic climate change are preposterous ideas, and yet at the same time finds millennia-old miracle stories of virgin births, people rising from the dead, or nocturnal rides on flying horses, etc. to be completely credible and utterly reliable?

Some of the relevant research in all these areas has been conducted already, with the greatest amount devoted to the heritability of IQ. A limited amount of research has been performed on the heritability of authoritarian attitudes and very little research has apparently been done on the nature/nurture mix for things like critical thinking, tolerance for ambiguity, or curiosity and inquisitiveness. Nearly all attempts to engage the public to further science and reason seem to assume that a majority of those not already so inclined or engaged, can indeed be reached. Those convinced that the future of humanity critically depends on the application of science and reason to the problems that vex this planet would do well to test the assumptions underlying efforts to communicate science and reason in order to better direct their efforts. None of this should suggest in the slightest that if the number of people that can, in principle, be reached is below a certain minimal threshold, the effort is not worth it. Nonetheless, we need to have some idea of how successful we can reasonably expect to be, all other things being equal.

[1] Barring any “self-selection” biases of course.

[2] Ramachandran, Vilayanur S. Roger Bingham ed. Session 4. Beyond Belief: Science, Reason, Religion & Survival. Salk Institute. La Jolla, CA. November 5 2006. The Science Network. 23 August, 2009. (at 44:12).

The 48 Percent Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:55:00 -0700

I am not a professional, credentialed, scientist – I am just a guy with a B.S. in Interdisciplinary Science (IS) with an emphasis on science communication and the public understanding of science. I do consider myself a serious amateur and in that context, I do what I can to be, in Carl Sagan’s memorable phrase, “a candle in the dark,” a voice for reason in our “demon-haunted world.” I deliberately switched majors to IS from Electrical Engineering because I was so deeply concerned about the lack of appreciation and understanding of what science and critical thinking are, even among very bright students in engineering programs.

My undergraduate thesis involved a planned NSF-funded “Deep Underground Science and Engineering Laboratory.”[1] The State of South Dakota, and especially the Governor’s office, made a big deal about how much the planned laboratory could do for science education and attracting high-tech jobs–those involving Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM for short)–to the state. My thesis looked that these hopes in light of the realities “on the ground,” considering the fact that South Dakota is very conservative–both politically and religiously. The seed of this research was planted by an incident involving the local YMCA. Rather than “reinventing the wheel”, I will quote from my final paper:

“‘Part of the impetus for this Capstone project came from the opening of The Arts and Science Center at the Rapid City YMCA (YMCA ASC) in 2005. Initially, staff at the YMCA hoped to get students and faculty from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T) in Rapid City involved and the SDSM&T student Paleontology Club was especially enthused about the Center as they were to have a room showcasing dinosaurs. When plans for the room were discussed though, it turned out that the room was to consist of little more than colorful murals showing dinosaurs and people, together. As it was, a conservative, home-schooling, Christian mother was a primary financial benefactor of the Center and refused to have anything showing dinosaurs (or people) in their proper geological and evolutionary context. The student Paleontology Club refused to have anything to do with such an intellectually dishonest enterprise and the faculty of SDSM&T likewise has had nothing to do with the Arts and "Science" Center since this issue came to light. From first hand experience, this author also notes that the YMCA ASC also has an astronomy, or “outer space,” room that is completely devoid of any hint of the scale, in both time and space, of the cosmos.”

My research and writing unfolded over an 18-month period. The first task was to convince my readers that there was indeed a problem, so I looked at comparisons between the United States and other first world nations in science literacy and academic achievement and as one might surmise, the United States did not fare well. My research also looked at Math and Science Partnerships (MSPs) which are, as the name suggests, joint ventures between k-12 schools, federal and university laboratories, and industry, aimed at creating the workforce the United States will need to compete and prosper in a 21^st century world. Not surprisingly, the intended metric for the success of such endeavors was through standardized tests.

It was never my intent to answer specific questions, but to pose them. This was the approach that Daniel Dennett took in Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.[2] Asking my reader’s indulgence (hopefully) one last time, I will quote the final paragraph from my paper:

“To truly prosper, as a free society and as individuals, it is not enough to merely do well on standardized tests. What is needed are citizens that do not fall for the idea that vaccines cause autism, that do not spend millions, if not billions, of their precious health-care dollars on homeopathic remedies that do not work, and parents that are not so certain of the “power of prayer” as an efficacious treatment for disease that they refuse conventional (i.e. double-blind tested and verified) medical treatment for their sick child. It is quite possible to believe all the things above, and still do well on standardized tests or write sophisticated software for a modern computer. This research, while in no sense conclusive, will hopefully encourage these important issues to be examined in the development of ongoing “Education and Outreach” strategies surrounding the Sanford Lab, and hopefully, the NSF’s DUSEL.”

As my research drew to a close, I was bothered by some nagging questions. In my research, I made a point of discussing the probable relevance of the “Five Factor Model” of personality in describing what personality variables may go into fostering “scientific habits of mind.”[3] The personality traits included in the FFM are:

· Openness to Experience: curious, creative, non-dogmatic
· Conscientiousness: self-disciplined, seeking to avoid error
· Extroversion: outgoing, assertive
· Agreeableness: generous, easygoing
· Neuroticism: anxious, critical of self and others

These traits are not binary qualities, like whether or not a male is circumcised, but are a continuum like height or weight (okay, maybe not weight so much, what with the epidemic of obesity). While the applicability of the FFM to understanding what goes into creating “scientific habits of mind” seems obvious, none of the literature I found gave even a hint of how these traits might be distributed in any population. This is unlike the robust empirical and statistical data showing the distribution of intelligence (or IQ) in a given population. This seems like a good place to stop for now and also a makes a nice segue for the next installment.

[1] "Sanford Laboratory at Homestake". South Dakota Science and Technology Authority. Last modified date not given. 25 August, 2010.< .

[2] To the best of my recollection, I was not intentionally aping Dennett because while I was aware of his book and knew something of what it was about, being a poor student and having purchased Richard Dawkins The God Delusion in hardback, I had to wait until the paperback version of Breaking the Spell came out. By time I could afford to by Dennett’s important book, I had already settled on my research questions and goals for that research.

[3] Shermer, Michael. The Borderlands of Science: Where Sense Meets Nonsense. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2001.

A principled postition on an "atheist/agnostic" for the Supreme Court

noreply@blogger.com (K. Mark Northrup) — Tue, 11 May 2010 19:20:00 -0700

Note that the following has become moot for the most recent SCotUS vacancy...

On one of my frequent visits to Richard Dawkins' site I came across a discussion in the News section of an LA Times Op/Ed piece by Marc Cooper whose thesis was that Obama should consider nominating a religious non-believer (actually, Cooper used the word “atheist”) to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCotUS). While it would be nice to have a person of no faith as a member of the SCotUS, actively advocating for an atheist/agnostic as a nominee would constitute a transgression of Article VI, § III of the United States Constitution, which clearly says:

“The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.”

I am fully aware that the religious lobby have been doing a slimy end-run around the “no religious test” clause by using the fears and prejudices of their voting constituencies to subject candidates to de facto (i.e. “unofficial”) religious test for decades. However much fun it would be to turn the tables on believers by having a religious test of our own (by "our own" I mean the skeptical/freethinking/reality-based community, and this includes even the most "wet behind the ears" atheists), in all intellectual honesty, the only correct answer to the question of what sort of "religious test" ought we make up, is “none.” Personally, I would rather stake out the principled Constitutional high ground on this issue. Further, empirical evidence supports the conclusion that religious believers would be utterly blind to the hypocrisy of their own position as any public statement that does not constitute "thunderous applause" for their position is, in fact, in their distorted world view, callous hostility; they seem to not recognize a "yeah, whatever" (insert whiny, nasal sound when you say "whatever") as a dismissal indicating that whatever was said is actually recognized as irrelevant.

I think Richard Dawkins phrase “conscious raising” is particularly applicable in this case. I would like to see voters, candidates, and the media become reflexively suspicious of candidates that trot out their piety in order to win votes. Likewise I would like to see fellow citizens, candidates, and the media heap scorn and derision upon voters (whether singly or in groups) that attempt to ascertain the religious opinions of candidates. I would love to see the day when in reply to a question put to a candidate about their religious sentiments, they answer with something like this: “The Framers of the Constitution knew well what kind of damage could be done to a country by inflaming religious prejudices and hatreds among its citizens. This is why Article VI, § III of the United States Constitution specifically forbids religious tests for any 'office or public trust.' What the framers likely did not anticipate was the extent to which citizens could be manipulated into creating an 'unofficial' test by unprincipled demagogues with an agenda that care not a whit for the Constitution. Merely asking a candidate or nominee for public office 'are you religious?' is a "religious test" and is antithetical to the ideals and values upon which our Constitution is based and is about the most un-patriotic, un-American thing I can imagine.”

I must confess to being less than sanguine about the possibility of such a day coming to pass in my lifetime (one cannot say that until you are over 45 btw). But as Alexander Pope wrote in 1733 in his Essay on Man, indeed, "hope springs eternal."